What others said of Jane Austen and her work:

"Jane Austen is my favorite author! ... Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers." -EM Forster

"Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values." --Virginia Woolf

"The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste." --Virginia Woolf

"As nearly flawless as any fiction could be." -Eudora Welty

"Read again, for the third time at least, Miss Austen's finely written novel of 'Pride And Prejudice'. That young Lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!" - The Diary of Sir Walter Scott, March 14, 1826

"... The influence of her genius is extensively recognized in the American Republic, even by the highest judicial authorities. The late Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his associate Mr. Justice Story, highly estimated and admired Miss Austen, and to them we owe our introduction to her society..."" - Letter to Jane's sailor brother, Admiral Sir Francis Austen, from the Quincy family of Boston, Massachusetts, Jan. 1852

"Her flights are not lofty, she does not soar on an eagle's wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable, yet amusing" - John Marshall; Nov. 26, 1826

"Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, -- what we generally mean when we speak of romance -- she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; -- and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The letters of Mr. Collins, a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move laughter in a low-church archbishop." - Anthony Trollope, 1870

" ... she describes men and women exactly as men and women really are, and tells her tale of ordinary, everyday life ... with such purity of style and language, as have rarely been equaled, and perhaps never surpassed. ..." - Lord Brabourne, The Letters of Jane Austen

"... I fancy that Jane Austen was stronger, sharper and shrewder than Charlotte Bronte; I am quite sure that she was stronger, sharper and shrewder than George Eliot. She could do one thing neither of them could do: she could coolly and sensibly describe a man. ..." - G.K. Chesterton, 1910

" 'Principles' or 'seriousness' are essential to Jane Austen's art. Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous. ... Jane Austen's 'principles' might be described as the grammar of conduct. Now grammar is something that anyone can learn; it is also something that everyone must learn. ... " - C.S. Lewis

"Miss Austen understood the smallness of life to perfection. She was a great artist, equal in her small sphere to Shakespeare..." - Alfred Tennyson, 1870

Of Mansfield Park: "We certainly do not think it as a whole, equal to P. & P. -- but it has many & great beauties. Fanny is a delightful Character! and Aunt Norris is a great favourite of mine. The Characters are natural & well supported, & many of the Dialogues excellent. -- You need not fear the publication being considered as discreditable to the talents of it's Author." - Frank Austen, older brother