Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before it was ‘invented’
A headline in the London Telegraph.
Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game’s British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding, according to the book’s author Julian Norridge.
Austen mentioned baseball in the opening pages of Northanger Abbey, which she wrote in 1797-8.Introducing her tom-boy heroine Catherine Morland, Austen wrote:
“It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books.”
Such a fleeting reference indicated that Austen’s readers were familiar with the sport, argued Mr Norridge.
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