I must first congratulate myself on such a witty title for this post, though I am most willing to admit I felt something akin to it as I began to pore over the long and much drawn out copy of The History of Sir Charles Grandison and later in a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho. It was at first like I was reading something written in another language, stumbling over the words each time I encountered this strange and mystical letter:
We can even find this odd-f-looking letter within the subscriber list for Fanny Burney's Camilla (notice the Miss J. Austen, Steventon).
It will shock and surprise only some of you to learn that this is not a radical, impish "f" come to eat our tea cakes or steal our matching socks in the dead of the night, but actually just a fancy "s" (called the long s) used in the typesetting of the day.
Taken from the old Roman cursive medial s, the long s would begin to lose its appreciative audience before the mid-19th century. John Bell, the creator of the British Letter Foundry in 1788, is generally given credit for the demise of the long s.
As difficult as it is for us Janeites to read writings and manuscripts with this long forgotten not-an-f, I wonder how much trouble it would have been for Jane to read novels without its presence?
Until next time I am your most affectionate servant-
A Lady
