Jane Actually

that most in the audience responded to the story Mary related. Even Courtney Blake seemed interested.
    “I had returned to Chawton with my sister and mother and little moved from that happy home. I gained some measure of enjoyment observing the Austen and Knight families, but after my dear mother and then sister died, my connections to Chawton withered and I eventually left to travel the world.
    “During this time, I would occasionally recite
Sanditon
, to ensure that it remainded intact, but my newfound knowledge of the world suggested changes. So again
Sanditon
changed in many subtle ways.
    “After the discovery of the afterlife and the arrival of the AfterNet, I was finally able to commit my words to a permanent form. You can imagine my surprise, once I had the benefit of spell check, at the amazing discovery that friend is spelled ‘F-R-I-E-N-D.’” 1
    There was hearty laughter at Jane’s well-known idiosyncratic misspellings.
    “So again,
Sanditon
changed. Then came my decision to finally see it published and you will realize this was long before the AfterNet certified my identity. So in my search for an agent, I was told again and again that what I’d written didn’t seem to be the authentic voice of Jane Austen, that is until my work reached the desk … or rather the battered MacBook of Melody Kramer, who understood that I was not the Jane Austen of Regency England. I was a Jane Austen who walked Flanders Field and stood on the brink of the Grand Canyon and who cheered when England first brought home the Ashes.
    “That she chose to represent me then was, outside my family, the greatest gift I have ever received and the greatest debt I will ever owe to any person. Unfortunately, finding a publisher also proved difficult, which is when my agent proposed we find some way of proving my identity. And because of her efforts and the cooperation of both the Chawton House Library and the Jane Austen’s House Museum, you find me here before you, rather uncomfortably wearing the mantle of my own legacy. It is a garment that no longer quite fits, but I still wear it proudly.”
    1 Austen titled one epistolary novel (part of her Juvenilia)
Love and Freindship
. There have been arguments as to how much credit should be given to Austen’s editors.

Excerpt II
Physical comedy
    “I know what you are about, Miss Heywood.”
    Charlotte looked up in surprise at this and found herself being observed by Mr Sidney Parker.
    “I am sure that I do not know what you mean, Mr Parker,” she said, and returned her eyes to the book upon her lap. She meant to dissuade him from any further observations by increasing the intensity of her study of the words that had ceased to interest her half an hour earlier, but he failed to note her scrutiny.
    “I know very well of your machinations. And I heartily approve for I think Sir Edward totally unsuited for Miss Brereton.”
    At this she was very surprised. “I do not think I like being accused of machinations.”
    “Very well, spoils and stratagems then. You see I have observed you as closely as you observe those around you. At first I thought you non judgmental, but then I see you make your opinions of the little community my brother and the august Lady Denham have created.” He chose then to sit—unasked—beside her on the low, stone wall looking out to shore.
    “And how do you know that I make these opinions?” she asked, interested in his observation of her despite her desire that he be elsewhere.
    “Oh but your face charmingly betrays you. When you witness some behaviour of which you disapprove, you look away and it is like a cloud briefly passing before the sun, and when you look back the cloud has passed and it is sunny again. Your disapproval is like that; hard to detect unless you look for it.”
    “And what of my approval? How is that displayed? Can it be so picturesquely described?”
    “Of course. It is like the sun glinting off a piece of glass. But it too is gone in an instant.”
    Charlotte, still pretending to look at her book, laughed and then with a sigh closed her book. She then looked at Mr Parker and said, “How poetic you are. And from such fleeting expressions you deduce that I have conspired to … what exactly have I done Mr Parker?”
    “That note, Miss Heywood. The fortuitousness of its discovery could not have been better timed. Miss Brereton is now free. And for Sir Edward too the match would have been unwise. He has no money; she has no