This thesis argues for the significance of authority as it relates to the formation of Austen, Eliot, and James’s realist novels - focusing particularly on the language they develop to produce verisimilitude in their work. By analyzing thematic representations of authority within each of these texts alongside metatextual questions about authorial voice and construction, I demonstrate how ideas surrounding authority significantly inform the impression of realism these authors attempt to achieve. As language is the ineluctable stuff of novels, I examine how these authors employ various techniques and structures in their fiction to further their realist projects. Through this examination of language, I identify an intertextual relationship between the three authors and explore how this effects the authority of their fictional realisms. I argue that verisimilitude, or the impression of realism, is the result of the social world being made intelligible through the language of the novel. By first identifying the methods through which each of these authors make the social world intelligible, I go on to explore how these methods are constituted from differing - often conflicting - authorities of the social and textual world. Over the course of this thesis, I develop a theory of authority and textual intelligibility whilst offering several novel interpretations of the texts discussed.