Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Is This Pasted Note Jane Austen's Final Missive?

February 05, 2014

Is This Pasted Note Jane Austen's Final Missive?

From You Tube:
This is a movie that I made for my English 2 class. If you haven't already figured it out, I was supposed to basically Discuss Jane Austen's life and books. If you want a little more info check out these websites:

http://www.janeausten.org/

http://www.tvo.org/janeausten/bio.html

http://www.jasna.org/

A SCRAP of paper covered on both sides with Jane Austen's handwriting may offer clues to the author's thought process as she wrote Mansfield Park.

One side of Austen's note is already known to scholars as her transcript of a sermon, thought to have been delivered by her brother, the Rev James Austen. There are marks that show there is also writing in the author's hand on the other side, but no one has been able to read it since it was pasted onto a letter by James Edward Austen Leigh, the author's nephew.

Conservators at West Dean College, in West Sussex, are about to begin the painstaking task of prising the note away from the letter, which is itself pasted into a book, in the hope of reading the hidden text.

David Dorning, who will remove the note, said that it was written in 1814, the same year as Mansfield Park, and so might offer some insight into Austen's thoughts.

The text that is visible relates to a theme she explores in her third novel. It reads: "Men may get into a habit of repeating the words of our Prayers by rote, perhaps without thoroughly understanding - certainly without thoroughly feeling their full force & meaning."

Mr Dorning believes that the hidden text may be more of the sermon. "When I initially read it, I thought it was the sort of thing that Jane Austen might write," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Then I realised that it was a sermon by her brother. I thought maybe all the Austens felt like that about men.

"You can see clearly that the fragment has writing on the back. But because it's been pasted down nobody knows what it says - presumably it's more of the same sermon. It is fixed into the book so we have got some unsticking to do.

"It is almost certainly stuck together with some kind of water-soluble adhesive. We need to get it damp. I will be humidifying it gently to enable the adhesive to soften so that at some point it will be possible to lift it."

It is likely that no one has read the underside of the note since 1870, when Austen Leigh sent the book and letter to a friend. The item was recently bought by Jane Austen's House Museum at Chawton, Hampshire.

Only about a dozen examples of Austen's handwriting have survived, including manuscripts of her unfinished novels The Watsons and Sanditon.

by Jack Malvern

Above: "The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen" by Ozias Humphry.

With thanks to The Australian

'The Great Gatsby': Seven Life Lessons

Jane Austen's Sense of Duty and Obligation Has Been Lost in Modern Literature, Study Reveals

Father Of Anne Frank Listed As Co-Author Of Diary To Extend Copyright

Sir John Monash: Grantlee Kieza’s Biography

Julia Child’s French Cooking Book Was A Trail Blazer