Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/16

 various members of the family to beg they would not mention who was the author, and Jane herself expressed decided satisfaction when she heard it ascribed to a Miss Hamilton, who must have been better known to novel readers of that day than of this. Even in 1813, when Jane's fame was still further established by Pride and Prejudice, she wrote of herself as "frightened" when she heard that a strange lady wished to be introduced to her, declaring, "If I am a wild beast I cannot help it. It is not my fault"; and her family bear witness how genuine was her dislike to being lionized.

To her it seemed simply absurd that any great fuss should be made about writings which she herself said "cost her so little"; which were carried on as a pleasant pastime in the midst of other occupations, and without even a separate room to work in. To write a novel was to her almost as simple a matter as to write a letter, and why should she be more famous for the one than for the other? She valued the approval and admiration of her own family and friends, but she never wished to pose as an authoress before the world at large; and the sort of homage offered to Miss Edgeworth, Miss Burney, Miss Mitford, and others, would have revolted her. Her love of fun, too, made her enjoy the amusing mystifications that sometimes sprang from the preservation of her incognita, and although, unlike her great contemporary, she never denied her own writings, she took no pains to claim them, for her name did not appear on the title-page of any of her novels until after her death.

Perhaps it was the natural result of Miss Austen's complete absence of self-assertion that her fame was not widespread during her lifetime. At first sight