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’ A MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN J E A-L (–), the only son of Jane Austen’s eldest brother James and his second wife Mary Lloyd, was born at Deane parsonage, Hampshire, and moved the short distance to Steven- ton rectory in , aged , when his father became rector there on his grandfather’s retirement to Bath. Thus he spent his childhood and youth in the same house in which Jane Austen had spent hers. After school at Winchester he went to Exeter College, Oxford, was ordained in , and, like his father and grandfather, became a country clergyman. As a schoolboy he wrote verses and even began a novel, which Jane Austen encouraged. He represented his father at her funeral in . Upon his great-aunt Jane Leigh Perrot’s death in he inherited the estate of Scarlets, taking the name of ‘Leigh’ in addition to Austen. In he became vicar of Bray, near Maidenhead, where he lived until his death. A keen huntsman, it was his late success as a published writer with Recollec- tions of the Vine Hunt () which encouraged him to begin the Memoir in the Spring of , in which he drew upon the memoirs of his sisters Anna Lefroy and Caroline Austen, and of his uncle Henry Austen. K S is Professorial Fellow in English at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She has published widely on fictional and non-fictional writings of the Scottish Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Her edi- tions include Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (for Penguin Classics). She is currently completing a critical study of Austen under the title Jane Austen’s Textual Lives. ’ For over years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over titles–– from the ,-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels–– the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes 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 Introduction and Notes by KATHRYN SUTHERLAND 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Editorial matter © Kathryn Sutherland 2002 See Acknowledgements for further copyright details The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–284074–6 13579108642 Typeset in Ehrhardt by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In preparing this edition I have incurred many debts and received advice and assistance from several sources. My greatest debt is to Deirdre Le Faye, who generously shared with me her Jane Austen scholarship and 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 Record Office, Winchester; to the staff of the Heinz Archive, the National Portrait Gallery; to Judith Priestman of the Modern Manuscripts Room, Bodleian Library; and to the staff of Balliol College and St Anne’s College Libraries, Oxford. My thanks for specific and general advice go to Geneviève Baudon Adams, Claire Harman, Tom Keymer, Claire Lamont, Hermione Lee, Matthew Leigh, and Jim McLaverty; to my sister Moira Wardhaugh for helping me think about family memories; and to Judith Luna for her enthusiasm for the project. I am grateful to the Archive Department of the Hampshire Record Office and to the Heinz Archive and Library, the National Portrait Gallery, for permission to publish manuscript materials in their possession. I would also like to thank Brian Southam and the Jane Austen Society for permission to reprint 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 Lane. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix The Austen Family Tree x–xi Introduction xiii Note on the Texts xlix Select Bibliography lii A Chronology of the Austen family lviii . - A Memoir of Jane Austen () ‘Biographical Notice of the Author’ () ‘Memoir of Miss Austen’ () ‘Recollections of Aunt Jane’ () My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir () Appendix: Family Letters Explanatory Notes Index This page intentionally left blank LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS James Edward Austen-Leigh, a portrait added as a frontispiece to the Memoir, ed. R. W. Chapman () lxiv Jane Austen, steel-engraved portrait by Lizars from a likeness drawn by Mr Andrews of Maidenhead (after Cassandra Austen’s watercolour sketch now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), used as a frontispiece to the first edition of the Memoir () Wood engraving of Steventon Parsonage Wood engraving of Steventon Manor House Wood engraving of Chawton Church Lithographic facsimile of an autograph manuscript of the verses on Mr Gell and Miss Gill, now in the Pump Room, Bath Henry Austen, miniature, c. Private collection Anna Lefroy as a young woman Jane Austen Memorial Trust Anna Lefroy in later life, Maggie Lane Caroline Austen as a child Private collection Caroline Austen as an old lady Private collection This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION The Business of Biography When in Robert Chapman published his edition of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography of his aunt Jane Austen the Times Literary Supplement chiefly welcomed its reissue not for the life it recorded but for the manuscripts described in it. Under the heading ‘Manuscripts of Jane Austen’, it concen- trated on that feature of the Memoir which ‘makes it necessary to the complete Austenian . the particular account, in Mr Chapman’s introduction, of the manuscripts of Jane Austen’s letters and of her other writings’. The reviewer continued: ‘Here we may find . the last word about Jane Austen manu- scripts, which not only is a thing to welcome for its own sake but may help to bring to light other manuscripts which are known to exist, or to have existed, but have been lost to sight’.1 In the manuscript notebook of juvenilia, Volume the First, was known outside Austen family circles only by the two scenes of the spoof play ‘The Mystery’, printed by Austen-Leigh in and perhaps written as early as (when Jane Austen was or ). After and Austen-Leigh’s second edition of the Memoir, enlarged with early or unfinished manuscript drafts of several ‘new’ Jane Austen works (the cancelled chapter of Persuasion, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and a synopsis of Sandi- ton), there was no further printing of such material until the s; readers had to wait until for the first publication of Volume the Third, the last of the juvenile manuscript books. There was an important exception to this silence, in the edition in of Jane Austen’s Letters by her great-nephew Lord Bra- bourne, which brought to public light eighty-four autograph letters in the possession of Lord Brabourne’s mother, Jane Austen’s niece, Fanny Knight (Lady Knatchbull), and a minor 1 Times Literary Supplement, Mar. , p. xiv Introduction exception in the printing in of Charades . by Jane Austen and her Family. But in the s Chapman was busy distinguishing life from works and extending the Jane Austen canon beyond the six major novels on which her reputation so far rested. He had published or was planning separate and handsomely produced editions of the non-canonical writings that Austen-Leigh had chosen, after fam- ily consultation, to stretch out his biography, and it did not seem impossible that more manuscripts might come to light, especially as materials in family ownership were now beginning to appear in the auction rooms. Chapman was particularly concerned at this time with tracing Volume the First and the whereabouts of surviv- ing Jane Austen letters. This explains his slant on the Memoir in his brief introduction: its importance to him is as a frame on which to hang the extant literary remains and as a guide to the reconstruction of writings which may or may not still exist.

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