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.