Quotes from Devoney Looser

That innovator is the aforementioned Hugh Thomson, who might be called the Colin Firth of Austen-inspired book illustration." (P. 52)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you could put almost anything in the second half of this sentence, because the first half sounds clever and wise and must remind readers of the genius of Jane Austen.

Quoting her [Jane Austen] is the second-best recipe for happiness I've ever heard of.

But rather than end this book with any truth universally acknowledged, I'll riff with this: I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend haughty, highbrow exclusivity or celebrate uncritical adulation.

She was not born, but rather became, Jane Austen.

The longstanding neglect of the fascinating, pioneering group of women writers of the Romantic period is now a thing of the past . . . [but] our merely recognizing their existence does not mean that our work is done.

Women did not stand by and watch these changes occur. They participated, tangentially and head on, in debates about history writing that effected change.