Novels and social reform

Many early novelists aimed at social reform. Were they successful? According to a 1870 reviewer of J.E. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen , they were: “it is the increase of knowledge among the wealthier classes which has stimulated their sympathies for the the poorer, and, in the course of the present century, distinguished writers of fiction exhibiting the affections and sorrows of the poor, have awakened in the rich a sensibility of which they were at one time thought incapable.”