wfgodot
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Very interesting piece, especially for Jane Austen devotees, and they are legion. (I'm not one, but probably only because I've not read much Jane Austen; give me the Brontë sisters any day!) While it's always important to approach information of this nature with a degree of skepticism (Poe, for example, is said to have died after being bitten by a rabid dog - well....maybe), things like this do provide a gateway to the past, and that in itself is important too.
Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning' (Guardian)
Crime writer Lindsay Ashford bases claim on reading
of author's letters and claims murder cannot be ruled out
Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning' (Guardian)
Crime writer Lindsay Ashford bases claim on reading
of author's letters and claims murder cannot be ruled out
the rest at Guardian link aboveAlmost 200 years after she died, Jane Austen's early death at the age of just 41 has been attributed to many things, from cancer to Addison's disease. Now sleuthing from a crime novelist has uncovered a new possibility: arsenic poisoning.
Author Lindsay Ashford moved to Austen's village of Chawton three years ago, and began writing her new crime novel in the library of the novelist's brother Edward's former home, Chawton House. She soon became engrossed in old volumes of Austen's letters, and one morning spotted a sentence Austen wrote just a few months before she died: "I am considerably better now and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour."
Having researched modern forensic techniques and poisons for her crime novels, Ashford immediately realised the symptoms could be ascribed to arsenic poisoning, which can cause "raindrop" pigmentation, where patches of skin go brown or black, and other areas go white.
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"I don't think murder is out of the question," she said. "Having delved into her family background, there was a lot going on that has never been revealed and there could have been a motive for murder. In the early 19th century a lot of people were getting away with murder with arsenic as a weapon, because it wasn't until the Marsh test was developed in 1836 that human remains could be analysed for the presence of arsenic."
Professor Janet Todd, editor for the Cambridge edition of Jane Austen, said that murder was implausible. "I doubt very much she would have been poisoned intentionally. I think it's very unlikely. But the possibility she had arsenic for rheumatism, say, is quite likely," she said.
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