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Originally Posted by tompe
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"Significance" is indeed hard to define. Look on any list of "great writers in the English language", however, and you'll almost certainly find Austen on that list, along with authors like Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, Woolfe, and so on. All these authors are taught in English Literature courses as examples of "great writing" in the English language. I'm sure you could name equivalent examples in the Finnish language.
Do you think that universities will be teaching Pratchett alongside Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen in English Literature courses in 100 years' time?
Is Wodehouse significant? He was certainly an enormously popular writer, and his characters like "Jeeves" have become a part of popular culture. I don't know whether or not he's a "significant" author, though. Did he have a lasting influence on the direction of English literature, in your view?