] You mean, I didn't convince you last time, Barb ? ;-)

] Seriously, though, I do still believe that Mr and Mrs Austen would have let the young Jane read almost anything.

I think I've always felt that she did read all the books she mentions by name in her novels. I believe that even the lines of Shakespeare she quotes here and there add layers of meaning to the text.

It's just that when we read The Monk down in the crypt a few years ago, I did have trouble picturing THAT novel being read in the home of a clergyman by his daughter(s). I found it disturbing and cringe-making even 200 years after JA would have read it. OTOH, she quotes from 'Measure for Measure' in NA, and there are so many parallel situations to this play and to The Monk that I can't think she never read it. But Eeeeewwwww!