Poll

Yes, definitely BOTH! Depends very much on my mood, too.

Ha ha! Thankfully it is NOT a genuine choice. But these either/or polls are only interesting if there is a roughly equal degree of greatness between the choices.

Jane Austen!

I love them both, but i found Jane Austen first, and since then she's always had a private place in my heart <3

I voted for Jane austen and like Sigrid she has a special place in my heart. But i love Charles Dickens and i think he is a master with wicked writing skills

I totally agree! :D I love that about him. Jane Austen's stories are so "clean" and she makes it great 'cause she knows people so well, but I love Dickens' "wickedness" too ^^

Exactly!

both really...but charles dickens did the classics ^_^

Are you kidding? Jane Austen wrote classics also.

Dickens is amazing but I find his books to be very descriptive and kinda draining at times, it takes me about two weeks to read his where as Jane Austen I read hers in three days XD

I think the main great big difference between Dickens and Austen is the setting. To "summarize", Austen writes about young half-poor women seeking for love.
I haven't read all that much by Dickens yet, but as far as I know, he writes about poor people, struggling to survive. They also have a lot more going on than just love and the complications that comes with it.
What they have in common is that they know people so well and they both have an incredible ability to describe them so that they seem very realistic, just like people taken straight out of real life. In an another century that is.. :P
I dont't think Dickens' descriptivness is a bad thing at all, because it makes such a big part of the story.
I also like the way they both kind of comments on the story as they go along :)

I--oh, gods, what a hard choice. Ultimately I went with Dickens, though I can't really say why.

I can't choose@!I love both!

I like both, but prefer Jane :)

Haha. The results are skewed cause like 75% of Goodreads is female.

I'd vote for sampling size bias first, actually.

Dickens, FTW!!!!!

My God, that's two of my favorite authors!
They're the best of their genre, which is in the opposite sides of spectrum (though they both wrote about the society of their times).
Dickens is dark and sinister - the picture of the world few wants to see. Austen is comic and romance - but biting, sensible and realistic.
Dickens is set in the less glamorous side of reality, Austen in the fancier side.
So I say BOTH.

Merry christmas .........

Christmas related more info visit :::finger food brisbane party event.....

Ugh!!!! I HATE Dickens, he is so boring! At least Jane Austen is funny and romantic.

Dickens, hands down. Jane Austen is too pink and sugary sweet (diabetic- sweet) for my taste. Whatever people may say about Dickens's descriptive writing, I don't find it dry at all. I ADORE his writing. And I love the darkness that characterizes his stories.

Hayley wrote: "Haha. The results are skewed cause like 75% of Goodreads is female."

Nah, what a generalization :) I'm female and I can't stand Austen. But I love Charles Dickens. Personally I find Austen's female characters extremely annoying...

I like both but I've read Jane Austen first.

I think that Charles Dickens was more important at the time of his writing, but that Jane Austen has better survived the test of time.

I can't stand either of them.. :S

Saachi wrote: "Hayley wrote: "Haha. The results are skewed cause like 75% of Goodreads is female."

Nah, what a generalization :) I'm female and I can't stand Austen. But I love Charles Dickens. Personally I find..."

AGREED

DICKENS. All the way. I love Sense and Sensebility and Pride and Predjudice, though I prefer the way Dickens can be so depressing while still humorously commenting on all the events in his books.

I also read Dickens first.

Can't choose between them, love them both equally for completely different qualities, but I thought Dickens would need more support, so went for him.

BOTH!

AHHHHH! I'll say Jane Austen. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries helped win my vote. :)

They're so different. Jane Austen observed her world and wrote about it. Dickens consciously saw himself as a social reformer and was trying to change his world as well as record it. Austen crystallised a time, a place and a social stratum as it was.
I read them for different reasons, just as they wrote with different purposes.

Yes - Lizzie Bennett I love too - she made a lovely heroine - never the less I did vote Dickens - his theme of making good out of a bad life was warming and an enthusiasm-building item

Both, this isn't a fair question :P

Both. This is an unfair question

Both.

Neither.

Actually both. But I prefer Austen. Still, they are so different, I don't see any point in this question.

Both!! So i can't vote for one person!

Charles Dickens is one of my favourites ever and I found him first, his novels are always so interesting and gripping, he writes so much about the world around him with insightful opinions that I think any great writer should strive to achieve. I don't think these authors have much in common though so it's kind of strange to compare them.

I'm definitely on Team Dickens, but as I've read more Dickens than Austen, that might seem an obvious choice, but as someone who reads a lot of social history non-fiction too, I find his observations and critiques of the world around him, to be very insightful.

CUP have an Austen vs Dickens infographic over on their site which is quite cool.

http://www.cambridge.org/academic/jan...

Dickens wrote a great deal more than Austen but then of course he lived considerably longer.

Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle. She died young.

I love Austen so very, very much BUT I don't want to like in a Dickensless world either!

While Jean austen was a single girl, her novel are more concerned about love and romantic. I found all her novels are about a girl looking for love. Sure, it was about the herself. All writers used themselves as the characters that they imagined. And Charles was a parliament journalists, he got more concerned about his society and the poverty and struggle of his countries. Both are differences teste, and one of a kind. But in the way of writing style charles got a complexity in his writings that less reader are not easy to understand.

While Jean austen was a single girl, her novel are more concerned about love and romantic. I found all her novels are about a girl looking for love. Sure, it was about the herself. All writers used themselves as the characters that they imagined. And Charles was a parliament journalists, he got more concerned about his society and the poverty and struggle of his countries. Both are differences teste, and one of a kind. But in the way of writing style charles got a complexity in his writings that less reader are not easy to understand.

While Jean austen was a single girl, her novel are more concerned about love and romantic. I found all her novels are about a girl looking for love. Sure, it was about the herself. All writers used themselves as the characters that they imagined. And Charles was a parliament journalists, he got more concerned about his society and the poverty and struggle of his countries. Both are differences teste, and one of a kind. But in the way of writing style charles got a complexity in his writings that less reader are not easy to understand.

I prefer Dickens, no question about it!! Both authors are astute observers of the human psyche, but Dickens writes with more emotion, more empathy for his characters. He was always concerned about social justice. Austen, on the other hand, was more concerned with the sometimes ridiculous, superficial customs of her social group. Her writing just doesn't move me as much.

I see from these comments that some people don't like Dickens's "descriptive writing". That's PRECISELY one of the things I LOVE about him!! His prose is just GORGEOUS, and not boring at all! And his characters are SO alive!!

I've only read one Austen book -- "Pride and Prejudice" -- and I saw that her style and subject matter were not exactly my thing. However, I do want to read some of her other novels. But Dickens will always be my favorite of the two!! : )

Jane Austen - no competition!

Dickens's novels work better as TV adaptations, where his pages of self-indulgent description don't bore the viewer. But even TV can't disguise his dreadful female characters - shallow and two dimensional.

Charles Dickens is my favorite author of all time. I love his details!

I definitely would choose both if possible. But I'm really weak when it comes to Dickens' Great Expectations, which really was a slap in the face for the self-indulging and egoistic people. I enjoyed this kind of insulting awakenings of (almost) nasty people, ever since I read Aesop's fables as a child. I even used them to show it to other people what are they like actually, like in Andersen's This fable is intended for you. If they don't get it, they are stupid (almost ALWAYS the case, believe it or not), if yes they wouldn't dare to look me in the face because it's so true. A great social experiment. I was a rude child, I know..

I know of no author who writes a sentence as beautifully as Jane Austen.