Reception history of Jane Austen
The light of Austen scholarship was beginning to shine through several important early works. These works helped Austen become well accepted in the academy. The first was Oxford Shakespearean scholar Andrew Cecil Bradley's 1911 essay. This essay was "generally (largely) regarded (seen) as the starting-point for the serious academic approach to Jane Austen". Bradley pointed out Austen's ties to eighteenth-century critic and writer Samuel Johnson. He argued that she was a moralist as well as a humorist. According to Southam, this argument was "totally (completely) original". Bradley separated Austen's works into "early" and "late" novels. Scholars still separate Austen's works as Bradley did today. The second original early-twentieth-century critic of Austen was R. W. Chapman. His edition of Austen's works was the first scholarly edition of the works of any English novelist. The Chapman edition has been the basis for all editions of Austen's works after that.