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Judge Langlois: Wild companions, gambling, running around St James's like a neck-or-nothing young blood of the fancy. What kind of lawyer will that make?
Tom Lefroy: Typical.
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Tom Lefroy: I have been told there is much to see upon a walk, but all I've detected so far is a general tendency to green above and brown below.
Jane Austen: Yes, well, others have detected more. It is celebrated. There's even a book about Selborne Wood.
Tom Lefroy: Oh. A novel, perhaps?
Jane Austen: Novels? Being poor, insipid things, read by mere women, even, God forbid, written by mere women?.
Tom Lefroy: I see, we're talking of your reading.
Jane Austen: As if the writing of women did not display the greatest powers of mind, knowledge of human nature, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour and the best-chosen language imaginable?
Russell Smith
Extended Reading
