A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
well on the way to being finished, though E was not yet begun. It is
tempting to speculate that ‘my stupidest of all’ might refer to the recent
revival (1809) of JA’s hopes of buying back and seeing in print the novel
eventually published after her death as NA.
83 typical errors: meaning ‘typographical’ or printing errors.
‘I do not write for such dull elves’: based on a couplet from Scott’s verse
romance Marmion (1808), canto 6, st. 38: ‘I do not rhyme to that dull elf
| Who cannot image to himself’.’ JEAL spoils the wit of JA’s free
appropriation by failing to set it out as verse. See Letters, 202.
Chawton . . . (1813): an edited extract from a longer letter, no. 80 in
Letters, again bequeathed to Charles Austen.
to you for all your praise: JA wrote ‘to you all for your praise’ (Letters,
203).
84 The following letter . . . in February 1813: what is presented here is an
edited conflation of extracts from two letters, of 24 January and 9 February
1813 (nos. 78 and 81 in Letters), spliced together randomly and out of
chronological sequence. For the correct ordering of the various sections,
see Letters, 198–201, and 204–6. The letters, both to Cassandra, continue
a discussion of the same people and books, which may account for
JEAL’s confusion of their details. Both were inherited by Charles Austen
and lent to JEAL by Charles’s daughter Cassy Esten.
Fanny’s: Fanny Knight, JA’s eldest niece.
the rejected addresses: [James and Horatio Smith] Rejected Addresses: or, the
New Theatrum Poetarum (1812), a collection of parodies of well-known
and contemporary poets. JA wrote ‘M rs Digweed’ and ‘M r Hinton’
(Letters, 199).
85 Sir John Carr’s . . . Capt. Pasley of the Engineers: Sir John Carr, Descriptive
Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain and the Balearic
Isles, in the Year 1809 (1811); Sir Charles William Pasley, RE, Essay on the
Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire (1810). A ‘Society
octavo’ is a book in octavo format (technically, one printed so as to produce
eight leaves to each sheet, the commonest size at this time for new
fiction and non-fiction) borrowed from the Chawton Book Society or
Reading Club. In Letter no. 78 JA writes: ‘The Miss Sibleys want to
establish a Book Society in their side of the Country, like ours. What can
be a stronger proof of that superiority in ours over the Steventon &
Manydown Society, which I have always foreseen & felt?’ (p. 199).
Clarkson or Buchanan . . . the two Mr. Smiths of the city: Thomas Clarkson,
History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808); probably
Claudius Buchanan’s very popular Christian Researches in Asia (1811).
For the two Mr Smiths, see note to p. 84 above.
‘Mrs. Grant’s Letters’: Anne Grant, Letters from the Mountains (3 vols.,
1810).
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