Jane Austen on journaling and letter writing
by way of Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey:

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies’ ways as you wish to believe me.

It is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal."

BBC News has an article about a "new and improved" portrait of Jane Austen which was commisioned for the cover of a new edition of a memoir by Austen's nephew. Apparently the editors of the work decided that the original version of the portrait was "too unattractive". Humph!