Sublime

Charlotte Brontë explained the decision to use male names: ‘We did not like to declare ourselves women, because – without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine” – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.’

‘Lyds,’ my mum said when I was leaving. She looked out of place in her new room, which was decorated with someone in their eighties or nineties in mind. Mum has for the last couple of centuries looked like she is in her early forties. She still has black hair, just with some streaks of grey here and there. Her eyes are still bright.

when she was employed recently on the BBC production of Wolf Hall to be the hand double and weave some finger-loop braid,

1960s and 1970s cover interpretations of Jane Austen’s novels are an unfettered joy, with jackets featuring Biba-clad heroines complete with heavy eyeliner and flowing locks; a psychedelic Elizabeth Bennet; Persuasion’s Captain Wentworth as a sort of hipster-bearded Captain Birds Eye; beautifully manicured, red-nailed hands; and lines such as ‘A fr

some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignifican