before delete, cut and paste

The first two pages of chapter 11 of Jane Austen's manuscript of Persuasion, written in 1816 and published, after her death, in 1818. The British Library, Shelfmark: Egerton MS 3038, ff.9v-10.

The original pages appear to have been trimmed and pasted onto larger sheets and bound into a book.  Slow composition, time to smooth out thoughts and ideas.  Do ideas come to us more quickly because we can now type more quickly?  or is writing with a straight pen a form of editing as you go.

Why do I turn so often to images of handwriting?  Perhaps because it is a form of drawing, mark-making, with its own rhythms based in the hand, the arm and the body; the hand, the pen and the ink; the brain, the hand, the words.