Better than Jane Austen?

Today is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' probably known to most people through the recent films/TV series and the 'Bridget Jones' version than through people reading it.  I actually like 'Pride and Prejudice'.  The style is impeccable and the comedy first-rate although I am always disappointed in Jane Austen.  Her later books lost their comic touch and are irredeemably dull.  She never developed any intellectual  or stylistic ambition to compensate for the lack of sparkle.  At a time of huge social upheaval her books, as one critic put it, never move outside the park gates.

Those looking for good women novelists in the 19th century though have several to choose from.  I would recommend Maria Edgeworth whose 'Ormond' bravely tackles the tricky problem of Irish politics and is at least as good as anything written by her male contemporaries (it's 'Tom Jones' without the sex), George Eliot whose superb 'Middlemarch' is breath-taking in its ambition and range and Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for Cranford because it's most like Jane Austen in its subject matter but whose several books 'North and South', Mary Barton and the unfirnished (altough only just) 'Wives and Daughters' tackle the issues of social change in the mid-19th century.  The latter was a Minister's wife but she managed to combine decorum with a social conscience which Jane Austen never did, but she did write of herself 'people think I'm a communist but I think I'm just a Christian' which I love.

All of these novelists were in my opinion much better writers than Jane Austen because they combined style with substance,  If you want to kinow what is meant by the phrase 'style without substance' then read Jane Austen by all means.