Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill
up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining
authors. Spectator 93 (16 June 1711) The earliest description of
Jane Austen’s reading is Henry Austen’s account in the
“Biographical Notice of the Author” in the first edition of
Northanger Abbey, published posthumously in December 1817. James
Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of his aunt (1870) also describes
her reading, drawing on the information in the “Biographical
Notice.” Henry and Edward focus firmly on authors considered in
the nineteenth century to be “useful and entertaining.” They
both agree that she loved the works of Samuel Johnson, William
Cowper, George Crabbe, and Samuel Richardson, in particular
Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54). Henry Austen tells
of her early infatuation with “Gilpin on the Picturesque,”
writing also that “her reading was very extensive in history and
belles lettres” and that she was “intimately acquainted with the
merits and defects of the be