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Article: Family and scholarly annotations in Lord Brabourne's Letters: adventures of an amateur academic.(AGM 2008: Chicago)
- Article from:
- Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Jane Austen Society of North America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN NOVEMBER 1999, I buy a copy of Lord Brabourne's 1884 edition of previously unpublished Letters of Jane Austen. Don't really look at it. Shelve the two volumes next to Chapman's edition of the Letters, Deirdre Le Faye's more complete recent one, Jo Modert's facsimile collection, Penelope Hughes-Hallett's colorful My Dear Cassandra, and the paperback selection Marilyn Butler signed for me once at Oxford. The Brabourne book rests there quietly ticking away for eight years.
Then last fall for some reason I finally open it, and the bomb bursts. Good grief! This book is rich with marginal notes, tipped-in pages of careful brown-ink Victorian manuscript and penciled ...