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LITERATURE PAT LESLIE EXAMINES WHAT'S IN AN AUTHOR'S NAME Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature BY JOHN MULLAN FABER, pounds 17.99, 374 pp T pounds 15.99 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20080120
Author:PAT LESLIE

'Although ladies have written histories, and travels, and warlike novels, to say nothing of books upon the different arts and sciences,' a critic observed in 1847, 'no woman could have penned the "Autobiography of Jane Eyre".' This Olympian judgment, which appeared in one of the earliest published assessments of the mysterious bestseller 'edited by Currer Bell', gave Charlotte Bronte, as she told a confidante, 'much pleasure'.

Elizabeth Rigby, writing in the Quarterly Review, was equally confident that Bell was a man on the grounds that 'no woman could have said what Jane Eyre says about ...

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