The British Library has announced several pairs of glasses found in Jane Austen's writing desk may reveal what caused the early death of the one of the world's most-loved authors. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) 
 
 On July 18, 1817, novelist Jane Austen died at the age of 41. Much of Austen’s medical biography is murky, and how she died remains an enduring mystery. Historians, in the two centuries since, have dissected what little evidence exists. In her later letters she complained of bilious attacks, facial aches and fever. Austen experts fingered several possible killers, including stomach cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma or an adrenal disorder known as Addison’s disease. 
 
 An article published Thursday on the website of the nationally run British Library offered a theory of a more dramatic sort: What if poison, not cancer or faulty glands, did in the author of “Sense and Sensibility?” 
 
 If so, blame neither foul plot nor gentleman assassin. The arsenic likely came from a tainted water supply or a medicinal mix-up, the library suggested; that is, of course, supposing the element caused Austen’s death. The claim has been subject to a fair bit of skepticism since Thursday, when the library published an article on its website linking her possible cataracts to arsenic. 
 
 The library’s reasoning hinged on spectacles. In 1999, the writer’s great-great-great-niece Joan Austen-Leigh donated a desk that belonged to Austen. The library discovered that the desk held three pairs of glasses, two tortoiseshell and one wire-framed. The British Library recently had the glasses examined, and found that the lenses were convex, suggesting a farsighted wearer. 
 
 Engraving of Jane Austen based on a portrait by her sister Cassandra. 
 
 Austen eventually suffered from very poor eyesight, if the eyeglasses indeed belonged to her. The glasses varied in strengths. One of two tortoiseshell glasses, according to the British Library’s analysis, was quite strong. Perhaps the glasses’ increasing diopters told a narrative. 
 
 “Could it be that she gradually needed stronger and stronger glasses for reading because of a more serious underlying health problem?” wrote Sandra Tuppen, a curator at the library, in the article. “The variations in the strength of the British Library’s three pairs of spectacles may indeed give further credence to the theory that Austen suffered from arsenic poisoning, albeit accidental.” 
 
 This was not the only evidence to suggest arsenic poisoning, the article noted. Austen complained of skin discoloration (“black & white & every wrong colour,” she once wrote), which may also be a symptom of accumulating arsenic in the body. And inadvertent arsenic poisoning in the 1800s was not unheard of. Crime writer Lindsay Ashford, one of the first proponents of the arsenic theory, told the Guardian in 2011 that, “I think it’s highly likely she was given a medicine containing arsenic. When you look at her list of symptoms and compare them to the list of arsenic symptoms, there is an amazing correlation.” 
 
 By the heyday of the Victorian era, arsenic was ubiquitous in Britain, present in medicines and occasionally confused for sugar or plaster of Paris. Green wallpapers and green dresses contained arsenic, according to the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations magazine, as did “beer, wine, sweets, wrapping paper, painted toys, sheep dip, insecticides, clothing, dead bodies, stuffed animals, hat ornaments, coal and candles.” In 1858, a British candy seller nicknamed “Humbug Billy” killed 25 and poisoned more than 100 others when, meaning to dilute the expensive sugar in his peppermint sweets, he accidentally added arsenic. 
 
 The British Library cited Simon Barnard, an optometrist based in London, who believed that if Austen’s eyesight worsened — indicating cataracts — heavy metal poisoning was a leading candidate. Other cataract causes, such as diabetes, would likely have killed Austen before her eyesight dimmed to the point of needing the strongest tortoiseshell glasses. 
 
 Though Austen’s deteriorating eyesight has been a source of intrigue, past experts hesitated to ascribe it mortal significance. The British Library took a “quantum leap” when its conclusion jumped to arsenic, University of Texas at Austin 18th-century literature expert and Austen scholar Janine Barchas said to the New York Times. 
 
 New Zealand-based ophthalmologist Graham Wilson published a medical analysis of the author’s eye problems, which Wilson traced to a 23-year-old Austen. Given the evidence available to Wilson, the doctor concluded in the 2012 paper that, “There are many references to eyes in her novels, but Jane’s eyes and those of her characters cannot contribute further to the debate around the cause of her death at age 41.” 
 
 The debate around Austen’s death kicked off in 1964, when Zachary Cope, an English surgeon, argued that Addison’s disease killed Austen. He noted her fatigue, hyperpigmentation (discoloration) and weakness during bouts of emotional stress. It made for a convincing argument. Several Austen biographers, including Deirdre Le Faye, author of “Jane Austen: A Family Record,” contend that Addison’s disease was the culprit. 
 
 But Annette Upfal , an Austen scholar then at the University of Queensland in Australia, wrote in 2005 at BMJ’s Medical Humanities that it was not a sudden attack of Addison’s disease but a longer history of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Upfal teased out a history of illness in Austen’s letters, including persistent neuralgia and cycles of fever leading up to her death. 
 
 “Despite traditional accounts, this was not a case of a healthy person being suddenly struck down with a fatal illness,” Upfal wrote. “New medical evidence suggests that Jane was already suffering from an immune deficiency and fatal lymphoma in January 1813, when her second and most popular novel, ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ was published.” 
 
 The British Library’s hypothesis was unlikely to settle any debates. The article noted there were several limitations to the arsenic theory. The premise that Austen required glasses of such unusual strength could be flawed. It was possible that a physician did not prescribe Austen the increasingly strong lenses, and the writer simply purchased them. 
 
 “We can’t be completely sure that she wore them at all,” Tuppen pointed out. “However, we are keen to publish these test results in the hope that other eye specialists will share their ideas and opinions with us.” 
 
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 His great-grandfather spoke of a crashed Nazi plane. Decades later, the 14-year-old Danish schoolboy found it. ||||| When Jane Austen died in 1817, aged 41, her portable writing desk was inherited by her sister Cassandra. It was later passed down through her eldest brother’s family. In 1999, Joan Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen’s great-great-great-niece, very generously entrusted it to the care of the British Library. Among the items that had been stored for generations in the desk drawer were three pairs of spectacles. According to family tradition, they all belonged to Jane Austen. 
 
 Spectacles believed to have belonged to Jane Austen (now British Library Add MS 86841/2-4): wire-framed pair (on left), ‘tortoiseshell pair A’ (centre), ‘tortoiseshell pair B’ (on right, with string wound around arm). 
 
 The British Library has for the first time had the spectacles tested. Our Conservation department was involved from the start, to ensure that no harm would come to them. The company Birmingham Optical kindly supplied us with a lensmeter to measure their strength, and their specialist staff undertook the tests. 
 
 
 
 Louis Cabena (left) and Deep Singh (right) from Birmingham Optical, with lensmeter and spectacles in the British Library Conservation Centre. 
 
 The tests revealed that the three pairs of spectacles are all convex or ‘plus’ lenses, so would have been used by someone longsighted. In other words their owner needed glasses for close-up tasks, such as reading. Interestingly, ‘tortoiseshell pair B’ is much stronger than the others. 
 
 Test results 
 
 Wire-framed pair: R. + 1.75 DS L. +1.75 DS (PD 27.0 53.0 26.0) 
 
 Tortoiseshell pair A: R. + 3.25 DS L. +3.25 DS (PD 26.0 56.0 30.0) 
 
 Tortoiseshell pair B: R. +5.00/-0.25 x 84 L. +4.75/-0.25 x 49 (PD 28.5 55.0 26.5) 
 
 We showed these results to the London-based optometrist Professor Simon Barnard. He believes there are a number of possible reasons for the variation in strength. Jane Austen may always have been longsighted, and initially used the wire-framed pair for reading and distance viewing. She later required a slightly stronger pair (tortoiseshell pair A) for reading, and used the strongest pair (tortoiseshell pair B) for extremely close work, such as fine embroidery, which would have been held closer to the face than a book. 
 
 Austen is known to have had problems with her eyes. She complained in several letters about her ‘weak’ eyes. Could it be that she gradually needed stronger and stronger glasses for reading because of a more serious underlying health problem? Professor Barnard believes this is a possibility. He points out that certain systemic health problems can cause changes in the vision of both longsighted and shortsighted people. Diabetes is one such condition, because it can induce cataracts. A gradually developing cataract would mean that an individual would need a stronger and stronger prescription, over time, in order to undertake close-up tasks. However, diabetes was fatal at that time, so someone might not have lived long enough to require several different prescriptions in succession. 
 
 If Austen did develop cataracts, a more likely cause, according to Professor Barnard, is accidental poisoning from a heavy metal such as arsenic. Arsenic poisoning is now known to cause cataracts. Despite its toxicity, arsenic was commonly found in medicines in 19th-century England, as well as in some water supplies. In this situation, Austen would have switched from using the wire-framed pair to tortoiseshell pair A, then pair B, as her cataracts got progressively worse. 
 
 Jane Austen’s early death has in the past been attributed to Addison’s disease (an endocrine disorder), cancer and tuberculosis. In 2011, the crime writer Lindsay Ashford suggested that Austen died of arsenic poisoning. She came to this conclusion after reading Austen’s description of the unusual facial pigmentation she suffered at the end of her life – something commonly found with arsenic poisoning. Ashford’s novel The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen strays from theories of accidental poisoning into rather more fantastical murder. The variations in the strength of the British Library’s three pairs of spectacles may indeed give further credence to the theory that Austen suffered from arsenic poisoning, albeit accidental. 
 
 We should, however, inject a note of caution at this point: although prescription lenses were in use in Austen’s day, we don’t know whether these glasses were prescribed for her by a physician, or whether she bought them ‘off-the-shelf’. We can’t be completely sure that she wore them at all. However, we are keen to publish these test results in the hope that other eye specialists will share their ideas and opinions with us. 
 
 We know this subject is already of interest to literary scholars. Janine Barchas and Elizabeth Picherit of the University of Texas at Austin have taken a keen interest in the spectacles in the British Library, and have also been investigating Austen’s references to spectacles in her novels. Their theories have now been published in the journal Modern Philology. We look forward to further discussions and debate on this topic. The spectacles themselves have just gone on display in the British Library’s free Treasures Gallery for all to see. 
 
 Dr Sandra Tuppen 
 
 Lead Curator, Modern Archives & Manuscripts 1601-1850 
 
 The British Library 
 
 Email: sandra.tuppen@bl.uk
– The cause of Jane Austen's death at age 41 in 1817 has been an enduring mystery of the literary world. The legendary author's own letters complain of ill health, and experts have used them to suggest a number of possible culprits, from stomach cancer to Hodgkin's lymphoma, the Washington Post reports. Now, a trio of eyeglasses found in Austen's desk could hold a more intriguing answer. The spectacles of increasing strength indicate Austen suffered from progressive eye problems; indeed, the Pride and Prejudice author notes her "weak" eyes in her missives. Austen may have suffered from an underlying health problem that attacked her vision, writes British Library curator Sandra Tuppen, who theorizes slow-growing cataracts might have been caused by accidental arsenic poisoning. The toxic metal was common in 19th-century England, tainting medicine, water, and even wallpaper. Other causes such as diabetes would have killed Austen more quickly, says Tuppen. The debate over Austen's death dates back to 1964, when an English doctor argued the culprit was the adrenal disorder Addison's disease. Then crime writer Lindsay Ashford floated the arsenic theory in a 2011 novel, citing the skin discoloration that Austin notes late in her life. "I think it’s highly likely she was given a medicine containing arsenic," says Ashford. "When you look at her list of symptoms and compare them to the list of arsenic symptoms, there is an amazing correlation." But Austen scholar Janine Barchas, who has her own forthcoming report on the glasses, calls the arsenic theory "reckless," per the New York Times. "We look forward to further discussions and debate on this topic," writes Tuppen. (An unfinished Austen manuscript sold for $1.6 million.)