What next after Jane Austen?

[OrphanPip]

Frances Burney's masterpiece, Evelina, is as good as Austen's lesser novels though not as good as Pride and Prejudice or Emma. Burney is less of a cynic than Austen though, and her comedic caricatures are more of the eighteenth century than the forward looking realism of Austen's stuff.

[Jackson Richardson]

Charlotte Bronte hated Jane Austen's novels. The Brontes and Austen are separated by 40 years, and by a completely different approach to literature. Austen was a humorist and a realist; the Brontes were romantics and fantasists. George Eliot is (perhaps) a little more similar to Austen, but she isn't very funny, either.

IN Austen's six novels, no mad wives appear in attics, nor are there Heathcliffean obsessions, and marital cruelty is limited to hints (did hard-drinking Mr. Price beat his wife?).

For comedies of manners similar to Austen's (there are none equal to Austen's) perhaps you could look at Oscar Wilde's plays, or Forster's novels.

I'd completely agree with that.