Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.
One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today - love, money, family. They haven't gone out of fashion, so it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.
I've been fortunate in that I never actually read any Jane Austen until I was thirty, thus sparing myself several decades of the unhappiness of having no new Jane Austen novels to read.
Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.
I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything.
I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.
'Pride and Prejudice' - perhaps more than any other Jane Austen book - is engrained in our literary consciousness.
I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.
Jane Austen is very amusing.
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.