Beowulf to Virginia Woolf

In Oxford I met a woman and her little boy at the youth hostel. He was excitable and talkative; she had the tentative and on-the-edge look o...

...or sticking plaster, as one would say in the UK:

Jane Austen's home: Jane's own writing table: Class with Mr. Carpenter: Journals: Lunch on the lawn:

If I am envious, Jane Austen was not, at least not in her letters or her other writing. She seems to be perfectly happy being single, middl...