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Jane Austen

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Ken
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Jane Austen

Post by Ken » Sat October 23rd, 2010, 7:29 am

Interesting article in which an academic has claimed that Jane Austen's elegant writing style may have been thanks to the work of her editor!




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11610489

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Madeleine
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Post by Madeleine » Sat October 23rd, 2010, 11:14 am

Yes I saw this in the paper this morning, interesting theory!
Currently reading "Mania" by L J Ross

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Michy
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Post by Michy » Sat October 23rd, 2010, 3:22 pm

I just heard about this on the news this morning -- I was going to post a link here for the Austen fans, but someone beat me to it. :)

Apparently, Ms. Austen wasn't such a good speller. The documents are supposedly going to be released next week.

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LoveHistory
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Post by LoveHistory » Sat October 23rd, 2010, 4:55 pm

What's more interesting is the comments. One poster mentioned that s/he found the books Mr. Gifford edited much harder to read, and to this day hasn't finished Emma.

Her style itself is still there, just polished.

Her unedited works tend to be the more popular, and certainly funnier.

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Miss Moppet
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Post by Miss Moppet » Tue October 26th, 2010, 7:52 pm

About Jane having a regional accent. At first glance that seems surprising, because I always think of her characters as speaking in RP. But that's really only because the actors playing them do - RP developed later in the nineteenth century. I think some at least of Austen's characters would have had regional accents.

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Michy
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Post by Michy » Tue October 26th, 2010, 8:13 pm

What's RP? :confused:

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Miss Moppet
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Post by Miss Moppet » Tue October 26th, 2010, 9:06 pm

[quote=""Michy""]What's RP? :confused: [/quote]

Received Pronunciation = 'posh' English accent.

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Michy
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Post by Michy » Tue October 26th, 2010, 9:24 pm

Ok. I've heard of "King's/Queen's English", but not RP. The last Susannah Kearsley book I read, she used a term "RADA" that I had to look up, because I had no idea what it meant. I found it though -- good ol' Internet and Wikipedia! :)

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