Why I No Longer Mourn Jane Austen’s Untimely Death

Tomorrow is a dark date on the calendar. It’s the 207th anniversary of Jane Austen’s premature death – tragic, really, when you consider how young she was, all the years of promise she didn’t get a chance to live out, and the stories she never had time to write. So sad!

But I have good news! I no longer mourn over her untimely death, and you don’t have to either. Why not? Although the official record says Jane Austen died July 18, 1817, at age 41, there is a plausible alternative – one that I ch...