Abstract
This paper provides a review of some aspects of the life and novels of Jane Austen that have particular bearing on her approach to issues of sickness and health. It is based on a Keynote Lecture given at the Annual Congress of the British Society for the History of Medicine on 1 September 2011 at the University of Surrey.
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References
1.Sanditon , Chapter 5
2.Le Faye D (ed.), Jane Austen’s Letters , 3rd edn., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 (cited hereafter simply as Letters ) .
3.Tomalin C, Jane Austen: A Life , London: Penguin, 2000: 175–7 .
4.Letters , p. 36 (21 January 1799)
5.Ibid.: p. 140 (1 October 1808) .
6.Ibid.: p.303 (2 December 1815) .
7.Ibid.: p. 92 (14 September 1804) .
8.Ibid.: p. 231 (25 September 1813) .
9.Ibid.: p. 42 (2 June 1799) .
10.Ibid.: p. 96 (21 January 1805) .
11.Ibid : p. 303 (2 December 1815) .
12.See various letters that Austen exchanged with the Prince’s librarian and with her own publisher between November 1815 and April 1816, ibid.: pp. 296–313 .
13.Wiltshire J. Jane Austen and the Body , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 9 .
14.Larner AJ. ‘Jane Austen’s references to headache’. Journal of Medical Biography 2010;18:211–21 .
15.See Bottomer PF. ‘Along the autistic spectrum in pride and prejudice’. Sensibilities , 2006;32: 118–31 .
16.Appended Introduction to Sense and Sensibility , London: Penguin Classics, 2003: 360 .
17.Sense and Sensibility , Chapter 31
18.Ibid.: Chapter 43 .
19.Ibid.: Chapter 46 .
20.Emma : Chapter 5
21.Ibid.: Chapter 1 .
22.Ibid.: Chapter 2 .
23.Corfield P. ‘From poison peddlers to civic worthies: the reputation of apothecaries in Georgian England’. Social History of Medicine 2009;22:17 .
24.Persuasion , Chapter 12
25.Ibid.: Chapter 17 .
26.Sanditon , Chapter 2
27.Wiltshire J. ‘Medicine, illness, and disease’, In: Todd J, ed. Jane Austen in Context , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 316 .
28.Op. cit. ref. 26 .
29.Ibid.: Chapter 6 .
30.Ibid.: Chapter 5 .
31.Ibid.: Chapter 10 .
32.Cope Z. ‘Jane Austen’s Last Illness’. British Medical Journal , 1964:182–183; Upfal A., ‘Jane Austen’s lifelong health problems and final illness’. Sensibilities 2005;31:86–113 .
33.Austen-Leigh JE. A Memoir of Jane Austen , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002: 128 .
34.For full inscription, see Tomalin, Jane Austen , pp.275–276 .
35.Letters , p. 323 (16 December 1816)