Jane Austen Attack Misguided, Critic Says

Attack on Jane Austen's Talent Misguided?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that academic research into art and literature is always misrepresented in the press. Or, if you believe the story that Jane Austen did not herself hone sentences like the one I have just ripped off from Pride and Prejudice, indeed 'tis most annoying.

Research by an Oxford scholar on Austen's manuscripts has led to the startling claim that the most elegant prose stylist in the history of the English novel in fact submitted messy, "experimental' texts that were cleaned up and polished to their famous dazzle by her editor.

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