Austen's famous style may not be hers after all

Arts 23 Oct 10 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. The polished prose of Emma and Persuasion was the product of an interventionist editor, an Oxford University academic has found. Professor Kathryn Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature made the discovery while studying a collection of 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings for the Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition. The project, led by Professor Sutherland in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries, King's College London and the British Library with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council has reunited in a free-to-access online archive all Jane Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts for the very first time since 1845 when they were scattered by the terms of her sister Cassandra's will. The archive launches on Monday 25 October, alongside a free public exhibition of a selection of manuscripts, first editions and papers related to Austen at the Bodleian Library's Divinity School. Professor Sutherland said: 'It's widely assumed that Austen was a perfect stylist - her brother Henry famously said in 1818 that "Everything came finished from her pen" and commentators continue to share this view today.