Photo : yfrog.com/i3whtkj - Shared by jameswales. Druidic.org. Auden on Austen. I just finished teaching Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and so this excerpt from W.H. Auden's "Letter to Lord Byron" caught my attention: There is one other author in my pack: For some time I debated which to write to.Which would least likely send my letter back? But I decided that I'd give a fright to Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to,And share in her contempt the dreadful fatesOf Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr Yates.Then she's a novelist.
According to the "letter," Auden is in Iceland and brought two authors with him: Lord Byron and Jane Austen. So, we have a (then) living poet telling a dead poet why novel-writing is a more "prodigious" form, a more insightful form, given to finer detail rather than hazy, vague generalities of the poet. Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer by Ogden Nash.