“You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of "brass,"
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.”

—  Jane Austen

W. H. Auden, Letter to Lord Byron (1936), lines 113–119

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Jane Austen photo
Jane Austen477
English novelist 1775–1817

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