Reception history of Jane Austen
American novelist Henry James liked Austen. Once he said she was as great as Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry Fielding - "the fine painters of life". But James thought Austen was an "unconscious" artist who was "instinctive and charming". In 1905, James said he did not like the public interest in Austen. He said it was more than Austen's "intrinsic merit (worth) and interest" deserved. James said that this was mostly because of the "stiff breeze of the  special bookselling  body of publishers, editors, illustrators, producers of the pleasant twaddle of magazines; who have found their 'dear,' our dear, everybody's dear,  their material  pretty reproduction in every variety of what is called tasteful, and in what seemingly proves to be salable, form."