The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen has been challenged by an academic at Oxford University.
Professor Kathryn Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature says Austen's published style may have been the work of her editor.
After studying 1100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings, she says the manuscripts feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing".
She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there."
Professor Sutherland claims her findings refute the notion of Austen as "a perfect stylist".
It suggests, she continues, that someone else was "heavily involved" in the editing process.
She believes that person to be William Gifford, an editor who worked for Austen's publisher John Murray II.
Austen (1775-1817) completed six novels in her lifetime, two of which were published posthumously.
