Jane Austen and the Polite Puzzle

Book excerpt: This is a Jane Austen entertainment, part documentary; part well-grounded conjecture. You are asked to entertain an idea; the idea that Jane Austen as a girl played a lost (but genuine) card game called 'The New impenetrable Secret or Polite Puzzle.' You will find yourselves involved in a Jane Austen Discovery - appreciating the double significance of this phrase, as you see the game re-enacted by a pair of Regency young ladies and their governess. There is a demonstration of the light which the game and its sources throw upon Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Persuasion', presented in its social and historical context, and with a unique complete set of the cards.