Loraine Fletcher

Claudia Johnson (Letters, 5 October) defines two strains of Austen criticism. She argues convincingly for Terry Castle’s anti-normative Austen but does less than justice to what she calls – unfairly, I think – the elegiac reading In my review of Charlotte Smith’s poems (LRB, 21 September) I suggested that Austen’s houses, emblems of England, were created in reaction to the pro-revolutionary...

Claudia Johnson (Letters, 5 October) defines two strains of Austen criticism. She argues convincingly for Terry Castle’s anti-normative Austen but does less than justice to what she calls – unfairly, I think – the elegiac reading In my review of Charlotte Smith’s poems (LRB, 21 September) I suggested that Austen’s houses, emblems of England, were created in reaction to the pro-revolutionary...