Responding to a piece in the Times by Marina Lewycka that mentions Jane Austen among women writers who can be funny, Des MacHale dismisses this as 'one of the hoariest myths in literature'. He's edited many volumes of humorous quotations and never been able to find anything from Austen that was worthy of inclusion. Well, I must be reading different books from him. Whether or not her humour makes it into his collections, I think you'd have to be wilfully grouchy to miss it. I posted one example not long ago. Here are a couple more. From Pride and Prejudice:
"My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?''From Sense and Sensibility:"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.''
After a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Ferrars, just so violent and so steady as to preserve her from that reproach which she always seemed fearful of incurring, the reproach of being too amiable, Edward was admitted to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son.It may not be Groucho Marx, or the sort of thing that will sit well in a book of one-liners or side-splitting quips, but there's more than one kind of humour, and Jane Austen's is not to be sneezed at.Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward, a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resuscitation of Edward, she had one again.
In spite of his being allowed once more to live, however, he did not feel the continuance of his existence secure till he had revealed his present engagement; for the publication of that circumstance, he feared, might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry him off as rapidly as before.