And add this total horse hooey to the pile of conveniently told canards: “Dramatic new flourishes to the story continue to pop up, too. The Telegraph recently referred to Austen ‘stuffing her scrawled pages into her dress whenever someone entered the room’ — a detail straight out of Samuel Richardson’s best-selling novel, ‘Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded,’ published in 1740-41. Imagining Austen shoving papers into a flimsy Regency frock in front of a parlor window may well be your idea of a good time. If so, enjoy the imaginary peep show, but don’t call it history.”