Jane Austen Letters

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Praise for Jane's novels reaches Palermo

Charles, Jane's youngest brother and a naval captain, writes from Palermo on 6 May 1815. A discussion of Walter Scott's Waverley turns to praise of Jane's novels, though the reader likes Mansfield Park less than the first two. The two passages below repeat the same extract in different family biographies.

Charles John Austen to Jane Austen
MAY 6, 1815

Books became the subject of conversation, and I praised Waverley highly, when a young man present observed that nothing had come out for years to be compared with Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, &c. As I am sure you must be anxious to know the name of a person of so much taste, I shall tell you it is Fox, a nephew of the late Charles James Fox. That you may not be too much elated at this morsel of praise, I shall add that he did not appear to like Mansfield Park so well as the two first, in which, however, I believe he is singular.

Charles John Austen to Jane Austen
MAY 6, 1815

“Books became the subject of conversation, and I praised ‘Waverley’ highly, when a young man present observed that nothing had come out for years to be compared with ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ &c. As I am sure you must be anxious to know the name of a person of so much taste, I shall tell you it is Fox, a nephew of the late Charles James Fox. That you may not be too much elated at this morsel of praise, I shall add that he did not appear to like ‘Mansfield Park’ so well as the two first, in which, however, I believe he is singular.”