The Dark Side of Jane Austen

Over the semester, we’ll be reading several texts that were not published in Austen’s lifetime and that instead come to us from manuscripts (that is, handwritten documents) that survive among her papers. When reading for 1/29, take a moment to watch this short video that shows you some of those manuscripts. Many are currently housed in the UK (in the British Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford), but the manuscript for “Plan of a Novel” is actually at the Morgan Library—just a few blocks away from us in Manhattan (click here to see it).

EDIT:

Here’s a sweet video of The Beautifull Cassandra (which you assembled in class!) with watercolor illustrations.