Jane Austen's style might not be hers, academic claims
Austen completed six novels in her lifetimeThe elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed.
Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings.
The manuscripts, she states, feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing".
She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there."
Professor Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature claims her findings refute the notion of Austen as "a perfect stylist".
It suggests, she continues, that someone else was "heavily involved" in the editing process.
She believes that person to be William Gifford, an editor who worked for Austen's publisher John Murray II.
The research formed part of an initiative to create an online archive of all of Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts.
The three-year project - in which King's College London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London were involved - is due to be launched on 25 October.
Professor Sutherland, an Austen authority, said studying her unpublished manuscripts gave her "a more intimate appreciation" of the author's talents.
The manuscripts, she went on, "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things."
They also show her "to be even better at writing dialogue and conversation than the edited style of her published novels suggest."
Jane Austen (1775-1817) completed six novels in her lifetime, two of which were published posthumously.
Analysis
Jane Austen is widely celebrated as a supreme stylist - a writer of perfectly polished sentences.
Yet after studying more than a thousand handwritten pages of the novelist's unpublished manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University has concluded that Austen's style was far more free-flowing and featured a limited range of punctuation.
Letters between Austen's publisher and an editor who worked with him acknowledge the untidiness of her writing.
According to Professor Sutherland, they suggest it was the editor who then intervened to sharpen the prose of one of English Literature's most popular writers.
NOT ALL IS LOST!!!
HALF AN HOUR AFTER FIRST POSTING THIS ARTICLE 8.30 am Saturday 23rd. October.
Just listened to an interview on the radio with Professor Kathryn Sutherland. She quoted some letters from Murray which prove that Jane's works were heavily edited but she also states that the original manuscripts show much greater emphaisis on dialogue. They are written as though somebody is actually talking, with pauses and reemphasise of words and phrases. It's like actual speech which includes colloquialisms and regional speech. Professor Sutherland thinks that people didn't write again like this until Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Jane was far ahead of her time. Professor Sutherland thinks this shows Jane to be a greater, more innovative writer than we first thought. The professor has been able to come to these conclusions by digitally bringing together all of Jane's original manuscripts from around the world and studying them together.This is the the first time they have been able to be looked at, as a whole body of writing, since 1845.
PHEW!!! So Jane is a greater writer than we all thought. There you are!!!!
Later still. Now 10.15am here is the I-Player radio link for the TODAY programme on Radio 4. The interview with Professor Sutherland about Jane Austen's works.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vg88h/Today_23_10_2010/
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ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing this to my attention, Tony. I have linked the article to Jane Austen Today. Vic
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating! This would explain why her works don't all follow the same style and why some are more polished than others. It's quite well known looking at her manuscripts that she hardly followed any rules for punctuation, and certainly let her thoughts flow freely... but the sentences do read a tad too perfect.
ReplyDeleteWill go on and listen to the interview now!
Just listened to an interview on the radio with Professor Kathryn Sutherland. She quoted some letters from Murray which prove that Jane's works were heavily edited but she also states that the original manuscripts show much greater emphaisis on dialogue.
ReplyDeletehere is the I-Player radio link for the TODAY programme on Radio 4.
Thanks for the link, Tony. Only another question, I do not have a whole two hour free time to listen the Today recording, so do you know around what minutes of those 2 hours is the interview which attracts our particular interest?
It would be important that we could read the whole content of the Murray letters which Sutherland has used for her hypothesis (I guess she consulted the Scotland National Archive which is where IIRC the Murray archive is kept). Because we also have to remember that a quote in a letter outside its whole context can be twisted to mean something else that it was really intended (the 'ordination' idea about MP is an example).
Sorry Cinthia, I should have put the time before. If you drag the bar to 1:19:17 you should get the start of the interview.
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
Tony
Thanks for the information, Tony. It's been interesting to listen to her.
ReplyDeleteShe was also telephonically interviewed at the National Public Radio (NPR) in USA, and there is a transcript on what she said:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130838304
Though I really appreciate the positive points she has made regarding Jane Austen's talent with dialogue and speeches. I still think she is partially to blame for all the sensation created because she has not clarified to the media and the mass that the manuscripts she has studied and compared are those of the Minor Works, as there are no manuscripts of the novels (no first drafts nor fair copies of them, nothing); and of course that when she quotes from the letters between Gifford and Murray there is no way to know what Gifford meant with the errors in those particular manuscrips since the manuscripts no longer exists.
Plus, she is still advertising the manuscripts as "unpublished", but unlike the general public, we Janeites know that the text of the manuscripts have been printed since mid-20th century. The novelty of the project is that it is a facsimilar edition of all those manuscripts, which still they are only of the Minor Works, not the novels.