a sort of survivor's bias of literature causes a lot of people to believe that novels "used to" be of higher quality, greater originality, greater 'effort', greater literary-ness, greater inspiration, &c., than they are to-day
and it's like, well, that is because you're pitting a book published 150 years ago that people still talk about and read to-day, against your average aeroport written-to-spec romance that probably will not be being discussed 150 years from now. if you read the mass-market Grub Street hetslop of the Victorian era I promise you would not like it.
