Reception history of Jane Austen
Reginald Farrer, a British travel writer, did not like the sentimental image of "Aunt Jane". Instead, he wanted to study Austen's fiction in a new way. In 1917, he published a long essay in the Quarterly Review. Jane Austen scholar A. Walton Litz called it the best single introduction to her works. Southam calls it as a "Janeite" piece without the worship. Farrer claimed that Jane Austen was not unconscious (disagreeing with James). He said that she was a writer of great concentration and a sharp critic of her society. He called her "radiant and remorseless", "dispassionate yet pitiless", with "the steely quality, the incurable rigor of her judgment". Farrer was one of the first critics who saw Austen as a  writer.