] In JA's famous defence of the novel in NA, was she speaking with an entirely straight face? Was novel reading really so scorned at the time? Were heroines of one novel never found reading another?

In Sarah Green's "Romance Readers and Romance Writers" (1810) there are two heroines: one is Peggy who had read herself to utter silliness, up to calling herself Margaritta and imagining an honest Irish laborer a lord in disguise, and other says this,

"O yes, I read them sometimes," replied the lively Mary, "but then I do not make myself like my sister, a slave to them; and since our kind uncle Ralph indulged us with subscribing to the library, I very seldom get a novel I like; for Margaret sends for such incredible, such marvellous kind of works, that I shut the books with disgust, and seldom have patience to read them through."

Make your choice of your acknowledged readers. ;-)