Yet even in her lively, crisp narration there are a few phrases that strike on a modern ear as unaccustomed. Such is the use of the active for the passive tense, “tea was carrying round”; the elision of the final “n” in the infinitive, “but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to”; the use of adjectives for adverbs (often reproved as a form of slang in the present day), “she must feel she has been acting wrong.” The general use of men’s surnames by women occurs in the earlier books, but we see an indication of change in this respect in the passage of Jane’s lifetime, for in _Emma_ it is considered vulgar of Mrs. Elton to address Mr. Knightley without the prefix. There are little ways of expressing things that are not now in vogue, men are “gentlemanlike,” ladies “amiable,” also “genteel and elegant”; one phrase which has now descended to the realm of the lady’s-maid was then quite good English, “so peculiarly the lady in it.” “Excessively” takes the place of our “awfully,” we hear continually such expressions as “monstrous obliging,” “prodigious pretty,” and “vastly civil.” We have not hitherto noticed Miss Edgeworth’s, Miss Ferrier’s, or Miss Mitford’s work, though they are generally considered as belonging to the clever group of women writers who illumined the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, because in this chapter we are dealing only with Jane Austen’s own novels, not with contemporary writers except as they affected her, and at the time when she wrote her first books none of these writers had published anything, and could not therefore possibly have influenced her. Miss Edgeworth’s first novel, _Castle Rackrent_, came out in 1800, and Miss Ferrier’s _Marriage_ in 1818, after Jane was in her grave. Jane Austen’s own novels were written at such widely differing times, and the interval between writing and publication was so great in some cases, that the subject suffers from some confusion in the minds of those who have not looked into the question closely. As the order of writing is everything, and the order of publication a mere accident, we will take them as they were written. This was in two groups of three each. _Pride and Prejudice_ was begun in October 1796 and finished the following August; _Sense and Sensibility_ was begun in 1797 and finished in 1798, in which year _Northanger Abbey_ was also written. Then there was a long gap, in which she produced only a fragment to be noted hereafter, and not until 1812 was _Mansfield Park_ written; four years later, in 1816, came _Emma_, quickly followed by _Persuasion_. Of all these the first to be published was _Sense and Sensibility_ in 1811, and the dates of publication will thereafter be noted in chronological order in the book as it progresses.