Jane Austen's Critics

Tyler Cowen finds that Emerson didn't like Jane Austen.  His commentariat notes that Twain had a problem with her as well.

Twain: 

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone...

Another reader wonders why Twain kept rereading P&P if he hated it so much.

I remain a fan of Twain, Austen, & P&P in particular.

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