Dickens is to now as Austen was to the '90s?

So suggests Scott Timberg, in the Los Angeles Times:

Novelist Charles Dickens, who died in 1870 at 58, has taken a beating over the years. But he appears to be having the last laugh -- and not just because he's gone from being the most popular writer of the Victorian age to the era's best-read emissary for contemporary readers. He's become to the boom-and-bust early 21st century what Jane Austen was to the roaring, chick-lit-besotted '90s.

Not that I have anything against Jane Austen -- I'm a big fan, in fact -- but this is an interesting theory, and a very good piece. My favorite part: 

"Masterpiece's" [Rebecca] Eaton wonders if some of Dickens' hopefulness will get through to people. "He had an almost romantic sense that love will see you through. That may be what's happening to people now -- after being hypnotized by money, we're snapping out of it. He showed people striving to survive and be good when money was pulling them along."

Thanks to Chris for the link.

Comments

[Rob Velella]

It's an interesting idea, and there's likely some truth to it: The way we read authors of the past is really a reflection of the present. Scott Peeples wrote a whole book on how Poe's following has changed over the years called "The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe" (I haven't read it yet, but I've heard the author speak on it).

[Gina]

Sounds interesting. C. S. Lewis writes about this tendency, too, in "An Experiment in Criticism." Excellent book.

By the way, here's another good article on Austen and Dickens.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7993920.stm