by Susannah Carson, author of A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen (Random House, 2009).
“Can Jane Austen’s novels be considered the best novels of our time?”
“Why yes,” I responded, with the bewildered expression of someone who’s just been asked if she breathes air, “of course.”
But ever since that snippet of conversation I’ve been turning the topic over and over. Is it simply a devout preference? Or is it also a fact of literary history?
If we want to make the move from personal belief to universal truth, we’ll have to define our terms… Continue reading