[SunkenCiv]

Austen's 'The History of England', a spoof history written by a teenage Jane Austen. Image by kind permission of the British Library and Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SuziQ]

Jane Austen had an editor? Who knew?

[PistolPaknMama]

This is a revelation that writers have editors? I’m amazed but mostly thankful the British taxpayers footed this worthy and enlightening “project” instead of US.

[nickcarraway]

Hmmm, I'm not sure this isn't jumping to a lot of conclusions.

They are probably attacking her because she was a conservative.

[tlb]

So the first draft of “Pride and Prejudice” opened with “It was a dark and stormy night”?

[TruthConquers]

There must have been printers proofs back then, right?

I mean, who writes a clean first draft, anyway?

[Slyfox]

and letters between Austen's publisher John Murray II and his talent scout and editor William Gifford, acknowledging the untidiness of Austen's style and how Gifford will correct it, seem to identify Gifford as the culprit

A woman could NEVER have written so intelligently. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Slyfox]

The rest of the article explains it a little better:

John Murray II, who was also Byron’s publisher, was Austen’s publisher for the last two years of her seven year publishing career, overseeing Emma, the second edition of Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Professor Sutherland explains: ‘Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and the first edition of Mansfield Park were not published by Murray and have previously been seen by some critics as examples of poor printing – in fact, the style in these novels is much closer to Austen’s manuscript hand!’

Studying Jane Austen’s unpublished manuscripts side-by-side for the first time also gave Professor Sutherland a more intimate appreciation of Austen’s talents. ‘The manuscripts reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things, and show her to be even better at writing dialogue and conversation than the edited style of her published novels suggest,’ she says.

‘She is above all a novelist whose significant effects are achieved in the exchanges of conversation and the dramatic presentation of character through speech. The manuscripts are unparagraphed, letting the different voices crowd each other; underlinings and apparently random use of capital letters give lots of directions as to how words or phrases should be voiced.’ ‘Austen was also a great satirist. This thread in her writing is apparent in the sharp and anarchic spoofs of the teenage manuscripts and still there in the freakish prose of the novel she left unfinished when she died. The manuscript evidence offers a different face for Jane Austen, one smoothed out in the famous printed novels.'