Friday 22 October 2010

The real Austen?...














Everyone is familiar with the works of one of Britain's most popular writing talents. 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Emma' are just three of Jane Austen's novels that have enchanted their readers for almost 200 years. Yet new research suggests that the words we read, may not actually be hers.

During a project to create an online archive of Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland has discovered 'a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing', which makes her think that a third party was 'heavily involved' in the editing process. She says, 'the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there', but instead the manuscripts 'reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things'. The online project is set to be launched on October 25th.

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