< previous  next > 

2

acknowlegement; d'Arblay, D'Arblay.

Readers who print this text should be warned that it contains family trees up to 209 characters in width.

More detailed notes, including a list of corrections, will be found at the end of the text.

---

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 h

 < previous  next >