Pride-and-Prejudice

commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the
description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted
creature died so early!
—from his journal (March 14, 1826)
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her
work, as far as it goes, is faultness. She wrote of the times in which she lived,
of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which
was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance,—what we generally mean
when we speak of romance—she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with
wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and
hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen
and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy
how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her
people are all good;—and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some
are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright
as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The
letters of Mr. Collins, a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move
laughter in a low-church archbishop.
—from a lecture (1870)
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Nothing very much happens in her books, and yet, when you come to the
bottom of a page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will happen next. Nothing
very much does and again you eagerly turn the page. The novelist who has the
power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess.
—from Ten Novels and Their Authors (1955)
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and
then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait
of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with
neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid
physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I
should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but
confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run
the risk.