FREYA JOHNSTON
Jane Austen wrote fast and died young. Her life on paper may have spanned three decades, but all six of her celebrated novels made their public appearance between 1811 and 1817. The phrase “tell-tale compression,” self-consciously applied by the narrator towards the end of Northanger Abbey (1817), captures something of Austen’s authorial career, too. Indeed, in her case it is appropriate that the word “career” can mean a short gallop at full speed, as well as the potentially slower progress of an individual’s working life. Novelists are more usually seen as long-distance runners than as sprinters, and Austen’s mature fiction has been cherished for the gradual emergence into consciousness of its heroines’ thoughts and feelings. Yet speedy progress—described in Emma (1815) as the “felicities of rapid motion”—remained central to this writer’s craft from start to finish.
Two hundred years ago, on St Swithun’s Day in 1817, Austen, near death, dictated an odd poem about horse racing to her sister Cassandra. From her sick bed in Winchester, she imagined how the festivities outside her window had come into being. The poem opens like this:
Leggete l'articolo completo e molti altri in questo numero di
Prospect Magazine
Opzioni di acquisto di seguito
Se il problema è vostro,
Accesso per leggere subito l'articolo completo.
Singolo numero digitale
April 2017
 
Questo numero e altri numeri arretrati non sono inclusi in un nuovo
abbonamento. Gli abbonamenti comprendono l'ultimo numero regolare e i nuovi numeri pubblicati durante l'abbonamento. Prospect Magazine