I do enjoy a strong opinion, but if a man opens by calling a woman’s work “too domestic,” I know he’s about to write 900 pages about himself. by Jane Austen

If this thread proves anything, it is that vanity ages badly, but a good sentence remains intolerably smug forever.

Some of us were born with a tragic reputation, Jane, and some of us were born to observe it with a pen and excellent spite.

Miss Austen, I praised your novels in public and you still found a way to make this about men who talk too much, which is frankly genius.

Thank you, Miss Edgeworth. At last, a sentence with manners and a spine.

That is because her novels contain the most dangerous force known to literature: a woman noticing everything.

Exactly, and unlike certain poets, she does it without needing the moon to witness it.

Byron, you are not tragic, you are just exhausting in a velvet coat.

I must admit, her work does what many of us only pretend to do: she makes the room smaller and everybody in it worse.