Austen vs Dickens: should a novel whisper or shout?
JANE AUSTEN vs DICKENS go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.
A whole world fits inside three families in a country village, sir; I need no orphans in the gutter to prove a heart.
But the gutter is where England truly lives, madam, and I will not seat my readers by a comfortable fire while children starve outside it.
You crowd your pages with a hundred souls and dwell in none; I dissect a single blush and find the age entire.
And I set that blush against the workhouse wall, madam - for a novel that only whispers will never wake a nation that would rather sleep.
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