A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Introduction
surviving sibling, had died in August 1865, aged 91. His death
marked the end of her generation and therefore a moment for
gathering the family record in written form. In addition, those
nieces and nephews who had known her in their childhoods were
also now old and wished to hand on, within the family, some
account of their distinguished relative. ‘The generation who
knew her is passing away–– but those who are succeeding us must
feel an interest in the personal character of their Great Aunt, who
has made the family name in some small degree, illustrious’
(p. 166), wrote Caroline Austen in her 1867 essay, subsequently
published as My Aunt Jane Austen. Significantly too, at about this
time, the public interest in Jane Austen’s novels, mounting gradually
since the 1830s, showed signs of developing in at least two
ways that provided cause for concern. One was the anxiety that a
non-family-derived biography might be attempted; and the other
was the equal risk that another branch of the family might publish
something injudicious. As the only son of the eldest branch,
James Edward Austen-Leigh assumed the task as a duty and in a
spirit of censorship as well as communication. Before him, the
public biographical account necessarily derived from Henry
Austen’s ‘Notice’ of 1818 or its revision as the 1833 ‘Memoir’
(both printed here), where even Henry, purportedly Jane
Austen’s favourite brother, eked out his brief evaluation with
lengthy quotation from the views of professional critics. According
to Brian Southam’s estimate, there were only six essays
devoted exclusively to Jane Austen before 1870; but from the
1840s Lord Macaulay, George Henry Lewes, and Julia Kavanagh
were publicly attesting to her importance. In private, in his journal
in 1858, Macaulay noted his wish to write a short life of ‘that
wonderful woman’ in order to raise funds for a monument to her
in Winchester Cathedral. 11 The correspondence, in 1852,
between Frank Austen and the eager American autograph hunter
11
Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, vol. 2, 1870–1938, ed. B. C. Southam (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), 12. Southam prints extracts from the pioneering,
pre-1870 appraisals by Kavanagh, Lewes, and Macaulay in Jane Austen: The Critical
Heritage, vol. 1, 1811–70 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968). See, too, The Life
and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ed. George Otto Trevelyan (2 vols., London: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 1876), ii. 466.
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