It is common to speak of Jane Austen's novels as a miracle; the accepted attitude to them is conveniently summarized by Professor Caroline Spurgeon in her address on Jane Austen to the British Academy:

The business of literary criticism is surely not to say ‘ Inspiration’ and fall down and worship, and in the case of Jane Austen it is certainly not entitled to take up such an unprofitable attitude. For in Jane Austen literary criticism has, I believe, a uniquely documented case of the origin and development of artistic expression, and an enquiry into the nature of her genius and the process by which it developed can go very far indeed on sure ground. Thanks to Dr Chapman's labours we have for some time had at our disposal a properly edited text of nearly all her surviving writings, and scholarship, in his person chiefly, has brilliantly made out a number of interesting facts which have not yet, however, been translated into the language of literary criticism.