Tower and Town, September 2021

  (view the full edition)

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Twenty three years after Jane’s death and shortly before her own, Cassandra burned a significant part of the correspondence with her sister. Many details about Jane’s life and thoughts and the sister’s close relationship were lost. Gill Hornby’s novel attempts to solve some of the mysteries.

It opens in 1840 with Cassandra making an impulsive journey to the parsonage in Kintbury, ostensibly to pay her respects to a family friend, Isabella Fowle, on the death of her father. But her real purpose is more devious; Isabella’s mother, Eliza, was a dear friend of Jane and since Isabella is now to be forced out of the house, Cassandra is worried that Jane’s letters to Eliza might fall into unscrupulous hands. She fears that unfavourable characteristics of both Jane and Cassandra might be revealed and Jane’s reputation be damaged. She has to find them and prevent the contents becoming public knowledge.

The novel also expands on the lives of all the Austen family, their parents, Cassandra and Jane and their five brothers. You learn of the struggles of so many living on a rector’s income and the later struggles of surviving as two spinsters, who were very fond of and dependent on each other.

Gill Hornby is the wife of Robert Harris and the sister of Nick Hornby and now lives in Kintbury.

Virginia Reekie