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Makers Of English Fiction
by William James Dawson
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FROM FIELDING TO JANE AUSTEN
by Williams James Dawson (1905)
Chapter III of Makers of English Fiction.
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" ... Jane Austen, born in 1775, at Steventon, is one of the true immortals of English literature, yet she found no easy road to fame. Few novelists have written three great novels without the prospect of publishing one of them, yet this was Jane Austen's fate. And when we remember that all the great names we have already mentioned are the names of persons moving more or less in a large world, cheered by the praise or stimulated by the opposition of their contemporaries, and drawing their knowledge of life from ample sources, perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of Jane Austen's life is its singular isolation."
"Her highest claim as an artist is that she inaugurated the novel of still life.
"In a day when people wept over the mock pathos of Sterne, and were thrilled with the sensationalism of Mrs. Radcliffe, it needed an unusual degree of courage, of resolute self-poise, and of detachment of mind to accomplish this task, and for the development of these qualities solitude was necessary. And, to the discerning, there is genuine dignity and pathos in the picture of this quiet, cheerful, clear-eyed woman, far away from the great interests of life, sitting down to write books which no publisher was to venture on for years, and yet so absolutely assured of the rightness of her method, and so full of the quiet enjoyment of her own work, that her patience is never wearied, her temper never soured, her brightness never dulled. She wrought for pure love of her work, and without thinking much about it. She wrote at her little desk by the sunny window, carefully covering up her papers when a stranger entered, and breathing no word to anyone outside the family circle of the nature of her pursuits. Sometimes she wrote amid the chatter of conversation, and found it no detriment. She wrote on, unconscious of her own genius, and content that no one should recognise her as an unusual person. Before her, as she sat at her desk, all the little world she knew lived and moved, and it was all the world she wanted. She was content to love and be loved, and did not ask for praise. ... "
" ....there can be no doubt of the greatness of her work, though it is a kind of work too true and delicate ever to be appreciated at its real worth by minds destitute of critical discrimination."
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