A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
Army Agent, which led him into starting his own London bank, as well
as several associated country banking partnerships. He went bankrupt in
March 1816, with significant financial consequences for his brothers and
his sister Jane. Immediately thereafter, he reverted to a boyhood plan and
was ordained a clergyman the following December, becoming curate of
Chawton. With the occasional fashionable clerical appointment, he
remained a clergyman for the rest of his life and died in 1850. Henry
acted informally as JA’s literary agent, and it is from his various smart
London addresses that her letters show her conducting some of her
dealings with publishers and printers. He was also the first to make
public biographical information about JA, in his ‘Biographical Notice of
the Author’ (included in this collection), prefixed to the posthumously
published NA and P (1818). According to family tradition (Life & Letters,
48), he was JA’s favourite brother. JA mentions that ‘Uncle Henry
writes very superior Sermons’ in a letter to JEAL, 16 December 1816
(Letters, 323).
17 Francis . . . G.C.B.: Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. The details of
Francis (Frank) (1774–1865) and Charles Austen’s (1779–1852) distinguished
naval careers can be found in William R. O’Byrne, A Naval
Biographical Dictionary (1849; rev. edn., 1859–61). This can be further
supplemented by Sailor Brothers. Another family production (its authors,
John Henry Hubback and his daughter Edith, were Frank Austen’s
grandson and great-granddaughter), this book provides unique anecdotes
about Frank and Charles from family papers and oral tradition, and
includes the story that Frank was ‘the officer who knelt at church’ (p.
17). It was in Sailor Brothers that JA’s five surviving letters to Frank
were published for the first time, presumably the letters that cousin
Fanny Sophia told JEAL he might see but not print. Tucker, 165–90,
conveniently collects together in briefer space much of what is known. As
the surviving letters make clear, JA wove into her novels details from her
brothers’ naval experiences–– notably the names of their ships in MP––
and may have borrowed aspects of their characters for William Price in
MP and for Captain Harville in P, who Frank much later described as
bearing ‘a strong resemblance’ to himself (Letters, 217, 91; Austen Papers,
303).
prizes: the money realized by the capture of an enemy ship (or cargo) as a
prize of war and shared out among a ship’s officers. Depending on rank,
substantial prize money could be won. Captain Wentworth in P, ch. 24,
has made in the course of the war with France ‘five-and-twenty thousand
pounds’ in salary and prizes.
18 sister Cassandra . . . scarcely be exceeded: the closeness of the relationship
between JA and Cassandra (1773–1845) has been the subject of much
speculation by modern biographers, ranging through good sense, bizarre
curiosity, and wild surmise. It is described by various family members as
a deep and mutually sustaining emotional bond. It is also clear that it was