It might rather
have been expected that fresh scenes and new acquaintance would have
called forth her powers; while the quiet life which the family led both
at Bath and Southampton must have afforded abundant leisure for
composition; but so it was that nothing which I know of, certainly
nothing which the public have seen, was completed in either of those
places. I can only state the fact, without assigning any cause for it;
but as soon as she was fixed in her second home, she resumed the habits
of composition which had been formed in her first, and continued them to
the end of her life. The first year of her residence at Chawton seems to
have been devoted to revising and preparing for the press 'Sense and
Sensibility,' and 'Pride and Prejudice'; but between February 1811 and
August 1816, she began and completed 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma,' and
'Persuasion,' so that the last five years of her life produced the same
number of novels with those which had been written in her early youth.
How she was able to effect all this is surprising, for she had no
separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in
the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions.
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