Monday, December 24, 2007

December 24, 2007 - Jane Austin (for Austen)

Because of pride and prejudice, in spite of sense or sensibility, wherever we continue to write, we continue to make typos. The prolific Jane Austen was probably no different. But she pressed on in her quest, in various pre-Victorian drawing-rooms and wherever else she could carry a quill pen, and from quite an early age. Some of her earliest titles, in fact, bear the unmistakable mark of a precocious novelist: Love & Freindship, published in 1790, for example, which Austen authored at the age of fourteen. OhioLINK exhibits the classic etiquette error of failing to get your guest's name right with 20 instances of Jane Austin, making it a "high probability" typo on the Ballard list. (Pictured is the Jane Austen action figure from the Archie McPhee store in Seattle, Washington.)

Carol Reid

Update: Thanks go to a reader who urges caution with this typo, pointing out that there is a 18th-century author by the name of Jane G. (Goodwin) Austin (1831-1894).

No comments: