Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters

Jane Austen, Her Life and
Letters, by William

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Title: Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters A Family Record
Author: William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

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JANE AUSTEN
HER LIFE AND LETTERS
A Family Record
by
WILLIAM AUSTEN-LEIGH

and
RICHARD ARTHUR AUSTEN-LEIGH
With a Portrait

London Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place 1913 [All rights
reserved]
[Illustration: J. Zoffany R. A. pinxit Emery Walker Ph. sc.
Jane Austen
see p. 62]

PREFACE
Since 1870-1, when J. E. Austen Leigh[1] published his Memoir of
Jane Austen, considerable additions have been made to the stock of
information available for her biographers. Of these fresh sources of
knowledge the set of letters from Jane to Cassandra, edited by Lord
Brabourne, has been by far the most important. These letters are
invaluable as mémoires pour servir; although they cover only the
comparatively rare periods when the two sisters were separated, and
although Cassandra purposely destroyed many of the letters likely to
prove the most interesting, from a distaste for publicity.
Some further correspondence, and many incidents in the careers of two
of her brothers, may be read in Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers, by J. H.
Hubback and Edith C. Hubback; while Miss Constance Hill has been
able to add several family traditions to the interesting topographical
information embodied in her Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends.
Nor ought we to forget the careful research shown in other biographies
of the author, especially that by Mr. Oscar Fay Adams.
During the last few years, we have been fortunate enough to be able to

add to this store; and every existing MS. or tradition preserved by the
family, of which we have any knowledge, has been placed at our
disposal.
It seemed, therefore, to us that the time had come when a more
complete chronological account of the novelist's life might be laid
before the public, whose interest in Jane Austen (as we readily
acknowledge) has shown no signs of diminishing, either in England or
in America.
The Memoir must always remain the one firsthand account of her,
resting on the authority of a nephew who knew her intimately and that
of his two sisters. We could not compete with its vivid personal
recollections; and the last thing we should wish to do, even were it
possible, would be to supersede it. We believe, however, that it needs
to be supplemented, not only because so much additional material has
been brought to light since its publication, but also because the account
given of their aunt by her nephew and nieces could be given only from
their own point of view, while the incidents and characters fall into a
somewhat different perspective if the whole is seen from a greater
distance. Their knowledge of their aunt was during the last portion of
her life, and they knew her best of all in her last year, when her health
was failing and she was living in much seclusion; and they were not
likely to be the recipients of her inmost confidences on the events and
sentiments of her youth.
Hence the emotional and romantic side of her nature--a very real
one--has not been dwelt upon. No doubt the Austens were, as a family,
unwilling to show their deeper feelings, and the sad end of Jane's one
romance would naturally tend to intensify this dislike of expression; but
the feeling was there,