Jane Austen Referenced Baseball 40 Years Before it Was Officially Invented

While it’s commonly believed that baseball was invented in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, Jane Austen referenced the sport 40 years earlier. In the opening pages of Northanger Abbey in 1797, Austen wrote, “It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books.”

Author Julian Norridge thinks that it was a term that Austen’s readers would have to have been familiar with since she didn’t bother to explain it further. He says that means there is “no doubt [baseball] was being played in Britain in the late 18th century, and equally no doubt that it traveled to America.”