It gives us great pleasure to know that the Chilham Ball was so agreeable & that you danced four dances with Mr. Kemble," wrote Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, in 1801. "Desirable, however, as the latter circumstance was, I cannot help wondering at its taking place—why did you dance four dances with so stupid a man?" Austen's witty, sociable letters have long delighted her fans, and scholars have pored over them for clues to a private life about which little is known. But last week Austen's amiable correspondence prompted a burst of speculation and debate that would have given her the vapors. Never mind that we're talking about the author of some of the most discreet, if biting, novels in English, including "Pride and Prejudice." The London Review of Books put the question bluntly: WAS JANE AUSTEN GAY?
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