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Jane Austen stands not only as a novelist central to the Romantic period but as one of the supreme prose fiction writers of all literature written in English. Her many admirers include Henry James and Virginia Woolf, both of whom she influenced. Yet amid accolades from academics and nonacademics alike is a pervasive elusiveness: Austen's greatness is unquestioned, but the particular nature of her talent remains disputed. It seems as if nearly all recent critics begin by repeating the ancient complaint possibly first uttered by Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Macaulay: what she does, she does well, but her range is limited. They charge that her novels—perfect (and diminutive) though they be—lack passion, depth, and awareness of a wider, changing world. Her books are said to represent the fading flourishes of decorous eighteenth-century ladies' drawing-room fiction—witty, charming, and moribund. Critics have answered these charges, but, curiously, while everyone finds substantial evidence of deep feeling, thought, and awareness of contemporary affairs, each takes a different approach.
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