Please, God, for the last time. Jane Austen and the Brontes were not the godmothers of chick lit. They were the godmothers of good writing. Pride and Prejudice is not the “original chick lit masterpiece,” no matter what Jennifer Crusie says. It is, however, a good book. Jane Eyre is a good book. Babyville is an offensively awful book that took Jane Green probably all of a week to write. I understand that chick lit writers would like to legitimize themselves by claiming Jane Austen as one of their own, but she is not their ancestor. Their ancestor is Mills & Boone. Jane Austen gave birth to Arundhati Roy, Kazuo Ishiguro, and, you know, literature. So stop it, seriously. You’re only hurting yourselves.
Jessa Crispin at Blog of a Bookslut makes an impassioned plea to end the sloppy referential blurbing, although she previously linked to this piece on Charlotte Bronte in The Guardian with this:
Enough of the Bronte industry’s veneration of coffins, bonnets and tuberculosis. It is time to exhume the real Charlotte - filthy bitch, grandmother of chick-lit, and friend.
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