“{{w|Elizabeth Taylor (novelist)|Elizabeth}}'s letters to Ray give a very good idea of her literary influences. These were definitely not her mother's her favorites (Hardy, {{w|Adam Bede}}, Gissing) and Elizabeth has grown out of Dostoevsky, dislikes Dickens, finds Lawrence a 'bloody crosspatch' and thinks Katherine Mansfield moaned too much. 'It is easy to see who is behind me: Jane Austen & Chekhov & EM Forster & Virginia Woolf. ...'... Other important writers for her were Sterne (for his relationship to the reader), Richardson and Fielding.Above all she revered Jane Austen and Turgenev.”