Jane Austen is a fount of wryness.  Here she is playfully, gently breaking some bad news of the state of some trees to their owner:  ‘I will not say your mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.’

And if you liked these examples of understatement, here’s an earlier one you may have missed, a favourite.

Source: Jane Austen, letter, 31 May 1811, quoted on a postcard in a boxed selection of half a dozen of her finest lines.

Photo credit: Matthew Brodeur, unsplash.com