Reception history of Jane Austen Critic" felt that Austen's exclusive dependence on realism was evidence of a deficient imagination. The reviewer for the "Edinburgh Review" disagreed, praising Austen for her "exhaustless invention" and the combination of the familiar and the surprising in her plots. Overall, Austen scholars have pointed out that these early reviewers did not know what to make of her novels—for example, they misunderstood her use of irony. Reviewers reduced "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice" to didactic tales of virtue prevailing over vice. In the "Quarterly Review" in 1821, the English writer and theologian Richard Whately published the most serious and
Spencer Austen-Leigh Spencer Austen-Leigh Spencer Austen-Leigh (17 February 1834 – 9 December 1913) was an English cricketer. Austen-Leigh was a right-handed batsman, although his bowling style is not known. He was born at Speen, Berkshire, and was educated at Harrow School. His name changed from Spencer Austen to Spencer Austen-Leigh in 1837. He was the great-nephew of the author Jane Austen. Austen-Leigh made his first-class debut for the Gentlemen of England against the Gentlemen of Sussex and Kent at Lord's in 1857. The following season he made a single first-class appearance for the Marylebone Cricket Club against Oxford University at the Magdalen