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Originally Posted by HarryT
"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.
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Pratchett is very significant. Not only are the Discworld series relevant, it gets people to read more SF/Fantasy books. Authors like Austen get kids to read less or not at all.
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Do you think that universities will be teaching Pratchett alongside Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen in English Literature courses in 100 years' time?
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The problem is a lot of the books read in school are not significant any longer. I don't think Pratchett will be taught in school in an ordinary English class. I think the books used should be more relevant to life as it is or will be lived by the students of the time. I've read a lot of books for school and most of them were insignificant and awful. For example, Chaucer was (and still is) irrelevant. It had nothing to do with my life.
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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?
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Wodehouse is only significant in the UK. Not so much outside the UK.