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
Jane Alexander (author) Jane Alexander (author) Jane Alexander is a Scottish novelist, visual artist, illustrator, designer, and short story writer originally from Aberdeen. Alexander studied Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art and completed a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Glasgow University ten years later. She is now pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Northumbria University. She released her first novel "The Last Treasure Hunt," which was published by Saraband Books in 2015 and is called a ‘a modern media morality tale’. Before her first novel, she has also written several short stories. Her short story 'In Yon Green Hill To