So when I was in school taking a mock-exam for Eng.Lit. I came across some questions about a passage from a Jane Austen novel. This was "unseen" i.e. had not been taught in class and I certainly hadn't read any Austen outside class. There was the option of writing an essay about something else - I have forgotten what but the questions looked easier. How wrong can one be? By the time I got to "What else did you find funny about this passage?" I knew I was in trouble, having found nothing at all funny about it...

The exam was a disaster and I learned to take my teacher's advice and do the essay regardless of what the alternative was when it came to the real exam several months later. I ended up with a B grade. Luckily my blushes were saved by an A in Eng.Lang...

But my mock-exam trauma had an astonishingly long-lasting effect; I had a horror of Austen that lasted until I finally managed to break through it and give the poor lass a fair chance as an adult this year...and guess what? It's funny! More precisely, it's witty and ironical - also dramatic and fantastical...the latter in the sense of it being something of a female wishful-fulfillment fantasy for Regency British ladies of no great family. But that is only repeating Austen's widely dispersed reputation.

Initially the wit struck me, later I was set for an amusing but dramatically dull story - proved false by a wholly unexpected event - and yes, somehow I managed to remain ignorant of the detail of the plot through my entire life. Even then, I was not entirely won over, although I was keen to discover how everything played out and the inevitable conclusion was arrived at.

I was finally won over completely quite late on when our heroine stands up to Lady de Bourgh. So much so that I was thinking along the lines of, GO! Lizzy Bennet!, during that scene. From thinking, OK, I can see why people like it but do I really want to read another Austen after this? I went to expecting to work my way through all the Austen novels in due time.

Of course this means that I'm going to have to take a look at the Brontes and maybe even give George Eliot a second chance, too...I'm already tackling some Dickens. It looks like my school nightmares may have worn off completely...only took two and a half decades.