JANE AUSTEN: _Letter to her sister, Cassandra_, 1799, in ‘Letters of Jane Austen,’ edited by Lord Brabourne. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1884. * * * * * [Sidenote: Manner of working.] Jane Austen was able to write in the midst of a busily-talking roomful of people, her desk sometimes on a table which she shared with others, sometimes at one side of the room, or even upon her knee when there was no other place for it; and under what might seem to many others impossible social conditions or distractions, she wrote ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ ‘Northanger Abbey,’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ all works showing concentration and keen perception. A friend has told us of her manner in writing--the earnest face bent above her page, the keen bright eye suddenly lifted to flash out recognition of something which was said in her presence, showing how entirely possible it was for her to hear and heed as well. ANON.: in _Harper’s Bazar_. * * * * * [Sidenote: No “den” for writing.] The last five years of her life produced the same number of novels with those which had been written in her early youth. How she was able to effect all this is surprising, for she had no separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions. She was not, however, troubled with companions like her own Mrs. Allen, in ‘Northanger Abbey,’ whose “vacancy of mind and incapacity for thinking were such that, as she never talked a great deal, so she could never be entirely silent; and therefore, while she sat at work, if she lost her needle, or broke her thread, or saw a speck of dirt on her gown, she must observe it, whether there were any one at leisure to answer her or not.” In that well-occupied female party there must have been many precious hours of silence during which the pen was busy at the little mahogany writing-desk, while Fanny Price, or Emma Woodhouse, or Anne Elliott was growing into beauty and interest. I have no doubt that I, and my sisters and cousins, in our visits to Chawton, frequently disturbed this mystic process, without having any idea of the mischief that we were doing; certainly we never should have guessed it by any signs of impatience or irritability in the writer. REV. J. E. AUSTEN-LEIGH: ‘A Memoir of Jane Austen.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Prejudices of the time.]