“What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”

Her famous miniature-painting metaphor for the narrow scale and precision of her fiction · Letter to James Edward Austen, 16 December 1816

• Art
• Style
• Writing

“But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.”

Rejecting pressure to abandon the kind of fiction best suited to her talents · Letter to James Stanier Clarke, 1 April 1816

• Humour
• Independence
• Writing

“I detest a quarto. Capt. Pasley's book is too good for their society. They will not understand a man who condenses his thoughts into an octavo.”

Playfully favouring intellectual economy over ponderous presentation · Letter to Cassandra Austen, February 1813

• Books
• Humour
• Style