Writing to her sister Cassandra about Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, Jane Austen declared, in a parody of Walter Scott: ‘I do not write for such dull Elves/As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.’ That identification of the good Austen reader as one continually on the qui vive, ready to piece out the novels’ nudges, winks and silences, also underpins Helena Kelly’s ambitiously revisionist new study of Austen — a study that is by turns illuminating, provocative and infuriating.
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