‘Miss Austen Forgot the Baby’
Margery Sharp was a sincere admirer of Jane Austen’s novels. ‘One of the great delights of Miss Austen’s works,’ she writes, ‘is that one can read and re-read them indefinitely, always making fresh discoveries.’ Emma was Sharp’s idea of a perfect novel. Yet one ‘fresh discovery’ Margery Sharp made, while re-reading Emma, surprised her a…