Eric Gillett
A taste for Jane Austen is like a taste for olives; either you have it or you haven't - and if you are in the unfortunate second category no amount of petulance or persuasion will shift you into the first. But if you are in the first, 'sealed of the tribe of Jane', you cannot have failed to wish for more of her. That is what the letters give: one more social circle peopled with the familiar types and seen through Jane's playful, ironic eyes; one more Jane Austen heroine, and one of the most delightful of them all - Jane herself.
To take only one example, no one but Jane could have written of that 'much admired' Mrs. Blount that 'she appeared exactly as she did in September, with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and fat neck.'