] This comes from a post on the `Persuasion' board which comments that Mrs Clay couldn't do much about her projecting front tooth. I wonder what teeth looked like in those days.
] But what else could one do in those days to improve one's smile? I notice that in many portraits of the period, people -- especially older people -- are painted with their lips firmly closed, and have a sort of shrunken look about their mouths: was this because they'd lost their front teeth?

If I'm not mistaken, Jane Austen's mother Mrs Austen had lost some of her front teeth. I can't remember where I read it.
And obviously she could not or wouldn't want to use the methods for replacing teeth that were available.

Leif G-n