Apropos the recent furor about the new novel that suggests Jane Austen was poisoned, we'll never know the whole story about why Jane Austen died at the height of her artistic powers at age 41, but what is for sure is that her brothers, before she was even cold in the grave, started the Big Lie about what sort of writer and person she was, sanitizing her radical feminist message, a Big Lie that has only started to crumble after 2 centuries:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/07/when-once-we-are-buried-you-think-we.html
Cheers, ARNIE PERLSTEIN
Weston, Florida
P.S. added Wed. 4:45 pm EST 11/15/11:
It just occurred to me that the strongest argument AGAINST the claim that Jane Austen was intentionally poisoned is that, in the shadow story of not one but TWO of her novels, there are instances of unpunished country house murder perpetrated by close family members:
Dr. Grant murdered by Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/ps-re-mary-crawfords-sisterly.html
Mrs. Churchill murdered by Frank Churchill (he who bought gloves at Fords---the better to strangle his aunt with?) in Emma:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/pd-jamess-trojan-horse-moments-about.html
So, if Jane Austen had the imagination to conjure up such dark doings in novels published in 1814 and 1816, respectively, I would find it a remarkably large stretch to imagine that she would calmly and unsuspiciously go to her death in 1817, without taking any actions to protect herself, in terms of what she took into her body via her mouth!
It would be like Agatha Christie being poisoned by a close family member---unthinkable!
Happy Birthday Jane Austen!
1 week ago
1 comment:
Jane Austen's cousin, and sister in law, Eliza de Feuilide, was the author of the novels and not Jane, as I prove in my book "Jane Austen - a New Revelation".
The medical evidence tends to show that Jane Austen was killed by arsenic poisoning which must have been administered by members of her family. Her blotchy skin was consistent with arsenic poisoning and a lock of her hair was tested by its owners in the last century and found to contain arsenic. This was consistent with the Austen family cover up of Eliza's authorship of the novels. A letter of Jane Austen's dated 29 January 1813 proves that all of the novels had been written by this date, as it gives the prices to be charged for each and confirms that they had been completed. Eliza died in April 1813. The letter of January 1813 shows that there were three completed novels that remained to be published: Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. In addition, in 1815 or 1816 Henry Austen bought back the copyright of Northanger Abbey from the publishers. Jane Austen travelled to London and together with Henry Austen organised the publication of these last four novels from 1813 to 1817. By 1817 it was no longer necessary for Jane Austen to be kept alive and her existence might prove an embarrassment for people investigating the authorship of the novels.
The person who probably administered the arsenic would have been Cassandra Austen, her sister, who lived with her. Cassandra falsified a chronology of when each of the novels was written, showing that the last few were written after Eliza's death. As I have mentioned, Jane Austen's letter of 29 January 1813 shows that this chronology was false and therefore Cassandra was intimately involved in the cover up of Eliza's authorship. Cassandra also destroyed 90 per cent of Jane Austen's letters to expunge any evidence of Eliza's authorship. However, she was not clever enough to destroy the letter of 29 January 1813 which is the "smoking gun" which proves Eliza's authorship of the novels.
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