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Originally Posted by Critteranne
I also doin't mind buying if I get a really nice introduction that puts everything into context, tells us what we know about the author (if anything), tells us what some words meant back in the day, etc.
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It's an interesting point about the changing meaning of words. A case in point occurred to me recently. I was reading Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park", and came across this passage:
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Having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any other use than to contribute to the window-tax, and find employment for housemaids, "Now," said Mrs. Rushworth, "we are coming to the chapel, which properly we ought to enter from above, and look down upon; but as we are quite among friends, I will take you in this way, if you will excuse me."
They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. "I am disappointed," said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'"
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The interesting part of this is the phrase "there is nothing awful here". How many modern readers would understand this in the sense that Austen uses it, of "inspiring awe", I wonder?