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Games and play in Jane Austen's literary structures. (Conference Papers).

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From: Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
Date: 20010101
Author:Selwyn, David

TO EMPLOY ONE'S LEISURE in reading a novel is to play; to employ it in writing one to play even more richly. To say that Jane Austen was well aware of this is not to suggest of course that she did not take both activities seriously. She made frequent astute comments in her letters on the books she was currently reading, and she famously said of the proprietress of a subscription library who boasted that her collection was "not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of Literature" that "She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel-readers & not ...

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