ABSTRACT
The overwhelming majority of English authors that were active in the decades around 1800 quote Shakespeare in a way that is completely indifferent to the larger design of his texts and their own. Even those writers that make fun of the faddish practice perpetuate it in their own texts. The one spectacular exception is Jane Austen. Linguistic or literary routine is what this most sophisticated and circumspect of writers was utterly incapable of; from her teens, she shows an unmistakable, fastidious dislike of Romantic Routine. Austen’s treatment of casual quotations confirms, ex negativo, their popularity because she handles them exactly like other literary fads: with explicit mockery, with indirect criticism and, most characteristically, by simply and completely avoiding them in her own language. Austen’s narrative voice is never distorted by the verbatim inlays and coy quotation marks that were so fashionably ubiquitous. In marked contrast even with the Romantic poets, who quote Shakespeare casually in their letters and diaries, Austen kept her published work as well as her private correspondence completely free from casual quotation, demonstrating an independence of spirit that is unique in her time.
