Was Jane Austen a lesbian?

I really, really admire biographer Claire Tomalin. Her Jane Austen: A Life was one of the books that made me want to do what I do for a living.

So it makes me sad to imagine that if she’s ever given me a moment’s thought, it will be as “that ridiculous woman who claims Jane Austen is a lesbian.”

I never claimed that.

But the story got away from me, the way stories do!

‘Did she ever experience same-sex desire?’ is something I get often get asked about Jane Austen. But it’s the wrong question. Not because it’s improper, but because it can’t be answered. A yes/no question needs evidence that would let you say yes or no. We don’t have it. We never will.

That didn’t stop the story running. In 2017, when my book Jane Austen at Home came out, I made what I thought was a fairly dry, historian’s point at the Hay Festival: that Jane almost certainly never had sex with a man.

I don’t think that’s controversial, given her position in society. But to rule out whether she ever had sex with a woman seems to me to be more complicated, and that’s a door I’d like to keep open.

By morning it had mutated, in print, into Jane Austen had sex with women. Tomalin called it “absolute bollocks.” She wasn’t wrong to be irritated. That isn’t what I said, and isn’t what I think.

So what did I actually say & believe?