Austen is brilliant. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

Austen’s genius in Northanger Abbey is how she teaches us the power of novels to speak truths about our world (a very Lewisian idea) by first allowing us to think that very idea foolish.

the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”

So good.

‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties,

I want this quote in defense of novels framed on my wall:

“‘And what are you reading Miss?’ ‘Oh! It is only a novel!’ replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.