Wow… I’m quoted in the introduction to The Friendly Jane Austen. How flattering! And just below Sir Walter Scott too. Ah, I write a few facetious lines to an Austen mailing list when I’m 18, and they wend their way nicely into publication a few years later.
Here’s the quote, dear reader (and yes, I know that’s Charlotte Bronte):
“Reading Jane Austen has led me to read texts with much more scrutiny, to catch potential glimpses of irony. Now I read everything—novels, newspapers, cereal boxes—for the subtext, which is a bit paranoid. I blame Austen.”