Editing Emma (novel) (section)

==Reception==
{{Main|Reception history of Jane Austen}}
Prior to publishing, John Murray's reader, William Gifford, who was also the editor of the ''Quarterly Review'', said of the novel that "Of ''Emma'' I have nothing but good to say. I was sure of the writer before you mentioned her. The MS though plainly written has yet some, indeed many little omissions, and an expression may now and then be amended in passing through the press. I will readily undertake the revision."<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Bibliography of Jane Austen|last=Gilson|first=David|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1982|isbn=978-0-19-818173-6|location=Oxford|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bibliographyofja0000gils/page/66 66–67]|url=https://archive.org/details/bibliographyofja0000gils/page/66}}</ref> Early reviews of ''Emma'' were generally favourable, and were more numerous than those of any other of Austen's novels.<ref name=":12"/> One important review, requested by John Murray prior to publication and written by [[Walter Scott|Sir Walter Scott]], appeared anonymously in March 1816 in the ''Quarterly Review'', although the date of the journal was October 1815.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000837746;view=1up;seq=287|title=The Quarterly review. v.14 (Oct 1815 – Jan 1816).|website=HathiTrust|language=en|access-date=2017-09-15}}</ref><ref name=":12">{{Cite book|title=A Bibliography of Jane Austen|last=Gilson|first=David|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1982|isbn=978-0-19-818173-6|location=Oxford|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bibliographyofja0000gils/page/69 69]|url=https://archive.org/details/bibliographyofja0000gils/page/69}}</ref> He writes:<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage Vol I 1811-1870|last=Southam|first=B.C.|publisher=Routledge|year=1979|isbn=978-0-203-19671-7|pages=64, 69, 71}}</ref><blockquote>The author is already known to the public by the two novels announced in her title page, and both, the last especially, attracted, with justice, an attention from the public far superior to what is granted to the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering- places and circulating libraries. They belong to a class of fictions which has arisen almost in our own times, and which draws the characters and incidents introduced more immediately from the current of ordinary life than was permitted by the former rules of the novel...''Emma'' has even less story than either of the preceding novels...The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand: but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.</blockquote>Two other unsigned reviews appeared in 1816, one in ''The Champion,'' also in March, and another in September of the same year in ''Gentleman's Magazine.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen's Emma: A Sourcebook|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|isbn=978-0-415-28651-0|editor-last=Byrne|editor-first=Paula|pages=40–42}}</ref>''  Other commenters include [[Thomas Moore]], the Irish poet, singer and entertainer who was a contemporary of Austen's; he wrote to [[Samuel Rogers]], an English poet, in 1816:<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Letters of Thomas Moore|last=Dowden|first=Wilfred S.|publisher=Clarendon Press|year=1964|location=Oxford|pages=396}}</ref><blockquote>"Let me entreat you to read ''Emma'' – it is the very perfection of novel-writing – and I cannot praise it more highly than by saying it is often extremely like your own method of describing things – so much effect with so little effort!"</blockquote>
A contemporary Scottish novelist, [[Susan Edmonstone Ferrier]], wrote to a friend, also in 1816:<ref>{{Cite book|title=Memoir and correspondence of Susan Ferrier, 1782–1854|last=Doyle|first=John A.|publisher=John Murray|year=1898|location=London|pages=128}}</ref><blockquote>"I have been reading ''Emma'', which is excellent; there is no story whatever, and the heroine is not better than other people; but the characters are all true to life and the style so piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aids of mystery and adventure."</blockquote>
There was some criticism about the lack of story. John Murray remarked that it lacked "incident and Romance";<ref name="todd2">{{cite book|title=The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen|last=Todd|first=Janet|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-521-85806-9|page=94}}</ref> [[Maria Edgeworth]], the author of ''[[Belinda (Edgeworth novel)|Belinda]]'', to whom Austen had sent a complimentary copy, wrote:<ref name="todd2" /><blockquote>there was no story in it, except that Miss Emma found that the man whom she designed for Harriet's lover was an admirer of her own – & he was affronted at being refused by Emma & Harriet wore the willow – and ''smooth, thin water-gruel'' is according to Emma's father's opinion a very good thing & it is very difficult to make a cook understand what you mean by ''smooth, thin water-gruel''!!</blockquote>
Austen also collected comments from friends and family on their opinions of ''Emma''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Emma|last=Austen|first=Jane|publisher=W.W. Norton & Co.|year=2012|isbn=978-0-393-92764-1|editor-last=Justice|editor-first=George|edition=4th Norton Critical|location=New York|pages=363–364|chapter=The Reception of Jane Austen 1815-1950}}</ref> Writing several years later, [[John Henry Newman]] observed in a letter about the novel:<ref>{{Cite book|title=Critical Companion to Jane Austen: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Works|last=Baker|first=William|publisher=Facts on File Inc|year=2008|isbn=978-0-8160-6416-8|location=New York|pages=97}}</ref><blockquote>Everything Miss Austen writes is clever, but I desiderate something. There is a want of body to the story.  The action is frittered away in over-little things.  There are some beautiful things in it. Emma herself is the most interesting to me of all her heroines. I feel kind to her whenever I think of her...That other woman, Fairfax, is a dolt- but I like Emma.</blockquote>
Later reviewers or commenters on the novel include [[Charlotte Brontë]], [[George Henry Lewes]], Juliet Pollock, [[Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie|Anne Ritchie]], [[Henry James]], Reginald Farrer, [[Virginia Woolf]], and [[E. M. Forster]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Emma|last=Austen|first=Jane|publisher=W.W. Norton & Co.|year=2012|isbn=978-0-393-92764-1|editor-last=Justice|editor-first=George|edition=4th Norton Critical|location=New York|pages=366–377}}</ref> Other reviewers include [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]] who considered Austen to be a "Prose Shakespeare",<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, Vol I 1811–1870|last=Southam|first=B.C.|publisher=Routledge|year=1979|isbn=978-0-203-19671-7|location=London|pages=117–118, 130}}</ref> and [[Margaret Oliphant]] who stated in ''Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine'' in March that she prefers ''Emma'' to Austen's other works and that it is "the work of her mature mind".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, Vol I. 1811–1870|last=Southam|first=B.C.|publisher=Routledge|year=1979|isbn=978-0-203-19671-7|location=London|pages=221–229}}</ref> Although Austen's ''Pride and Prejudice'' is the most popular of her novels, [[Robert McCrum]] suggests that ''Emma'' "is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility".<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/04/100-best-novels-jane-austen-emma The 100 best novels: No 7 – Emma by Jane Austen (1816)] [[The Guardian]] 4-Nov-2013</ref><ref>Susan Morgan. ''In the Meantime''. University of Chicago Press, pp23-51.</ref> Additionally, academic [[John Mullan (academic)|John Mullan]] argued that ''Emma'' was a revolutionary novel which changed the shape of what is possible in fiction" because it "bent narration through the distorting lens of its protagonist’s mind".<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/05/jane-austen-emma-changed-face-fiction How Jane Austen’s Emma changed the face of fiction] [[The Guardian]] 5-Dec-2015</ref>