One of the saddest things about Jane Austen is that she never got to see how important her books would become to the literary world. It definitely could’ve been worse: she could’ve been as unappreciated when she was alive as Emily Dickinson, who barely had a dozen poems published during her lifetime. Jane Austen was at least able to make a modest living from her books, even if she wasn’t as popular as the Brontë sisters were in their day. 

It is not cool to pit women against each other as I have done just now. Jane Austen deserves to have her day in the sun without having to be compared to other equally accomplished British people. Her canon is so iconic that memes are still being created about it to this day. Do you think A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft is producing a lot of meme content? Certainly not.