‘Lady Susan’: Novelist Shashi Deshpande on Jane Austen’s novel of the femme fatale (and her oeuvre)
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, and died on July 18, 1817. Jane Austen on a British £10 note. | Chris J Ratcliffe/ AFP
One needs to be either very brash, or a tremendous admirer of Jane Austen, to write about her. She has been so much written about by scholars and biographers that there seems to be nothing left to say. Every word she wrote has been picked up and scrutinised, its meaning probed, every action of hers, or even a lack of action, thoughtfully considered. For a woman whose life was, as has been universally agreed, uneventful, it is amazing how many books have been written about her.