a memoir of jane austen and other family recollections dec 2002

[...]... value placed on talent and cleverness, social distinctions, and the Knights’ powers of patronage within the wider Austen family In other words, Austen- Leigh’s memoir of his aunt is not just a family production, it is the production of a particular family view of Jane Austen, and against it might be set other, different family recollections and therefore different Aunt Janes Here we have Jane Austen as remembered... Edward’s grandson Richard Arthur Austen- Leigh had published with his uncle William Austen- Leigh an expanded biography, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters A Family Record, enlarging the  account with materials drawn from other branches of the family Substantially updated and largely rewritten by Deirdre Le Faye in , A Family Record remains the ‘authorized’ reference or ‘factual’ biography The absence... bond that either made; and as the guardian of her sister’s reputation and material effects, Cassandra is the key to what tangibly remains The sisters lived in close companionship, not unusually for the period sharing a bedroom at Steventon and again at Chawton But they spent weeks and months apart, often when one or other was staying at the home of another of the large Austen family It is this regular round... Edward (known as Edward in the family) was the only one of his generation present at his aunt’s funeral Of the other nieces to have known their aunt, Cassandra Esten Austen (–), Charles Austen s eldest daughter, and Mary Jane Austen (–), Frank’s eldest daughter, were both regular visitors to Chawton in their childhood Mary Jane was now dead, but Cassy Esten was her aunt Cassandra Austen s executrix... use of sealing wax, her games with cup and ball and spilikins––he conceals within domestic pastime what must also have been a profoundly undomesticated, self-absorbed activity Beyond a certain point the familial perspective is irrelevant, even dishonest Origins The decision to prepare a biography of Jane Austen was taken by the family in the late s Admiral Sir Francis Austen, her last 10 Mrs Gaskell,... fully appreciate the talent or revere the memory of Aunt Jane than Lady Knatchbull’ (see pp –) But in the same place Anna also writes that Fanny’s family, the Knights of Godmersham, felt a general preference for Cassandra Austen and that they viewed Jane s talent with some suspicion––intellectual pursuits and a passion for scribbling did not fit with their finer family pretensions Though Jane was welcome... round of visits––to Godmersham to the Edward Austen Knights, to London to Henry Austen s various fashionable addresses––which accounts for the majority of the surviving letters, addressed from Jane to Cassandra It was with Cassandra that Jane discussed her work in any detail; Cassandra was her chief heiress and executor of her will As such she was almost solely responsible for the preservation (and the... in Jane Austen s own words ‘almost another Sister’ (to Cassandra,  October ).14 It was a bond strengthened by the death of her mother when Fanny was only  As Anna Lefroy, another motherless niece, records in her Recollections of Aunt Jane : ‘Owing to particular circumstances there grew up during the latter years of Aunt Jane s life a great & a ectionate intimacy between herself & the eldest of. .. to marketing another Jane Austen Equally, Caroline’s account of Cassandra’s pruning of the correspondence may suggest secrets hidden and confidences suppressed, but it is just as likely that what remains is not atypical within a larger, censored record but fully representative of it Cassandra may have chosen to preserve and apportion with such care these letters and not others chiefly because their addressees... Partiality and Evasion, or Secrets and Lies The family members whose labours around  chiefly constructed the public record of Jane Austen –James Edward, his two sisters, and their cousin Cassy Esten––were alive equally to the fortuitous and the ethical dimensions of their task The failings of memory and the shadow of old age as it falls across a later generation ensure that the Memoir opens on a . knowledge of the archives; she also checked my text of Caroline Austen s My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir against the manuscript in Jane Austen s House, Chawton. I am grateful to the staff of the Hampshire. Caroline Austen s My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir. For permission to reproduce images of family members, my thanks go to Katharine Beaumont, T. F. Carpenter of the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, and to Maggie. perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS J. E. AUSTEN- LEIGH A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections Edited with an