Reception history of Jane Austen
After Bradley and Chapman, Austen scholarship grew very quickly in the 1920s. British writer E. M. Forster pointed out Austen's works for his idea of the "round" character. It was with the 1939 publication of Mary Lascelles' Jane Austen and Her Art—"the first full-scale historical and scholarly study" of Austen—that the academic study of her works matured. Lascelles included a short essay about her, a study of the books Austen read and their influence on her writing, and a study of Austen's style and "narrative art". Lascelles felt that critics before her had all worked in a way "so small that the reader does not see how they have reached their conclusions until he has patiently found his own way to them". She wished to study all of Austen's works, style, and techniques together. Critics after Lascelles agreed that she studied them well. Lascelles was interested in Austen's connection to Samuel Johnson and her desire to discuss morality through fiction. In this she was much like Bradley before her. But around this time, some fans of Austen began to worry that her works were being enjoyed by only a few people. They were fearful that Austen was being criticized only by academics. This was an argument that continued to the beginning of the twenty-first century.