A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Introduction
xxix
us, nephews and nieces, little or great–– and indeed I I [sic]
think myself she was right, in that as in most other things’
(p. 184). The collected letters of Jane Austen, as they are now
available to us, only came together in 1932, and so the reconnection
of the various parts of the epistolary archive considerably
post-dates both the Memoir and the publication of the largest
Knatchbull cache (in 1884). Of the 161 letters from Jane Austen
now known to have survived, only six were addressed to Fanny
Knight (Lady Knatchbull) in her own right; but Cassandra left
to her keeping almost all of her own surviving correspondence
with her sister, presumably because very many of these letters
were written either to or from Fanny’s childhood home of
Godmersham. Without them, James Edward’s memoir lacks
significant information. For example, the sparseness of his
record for the Southampton years and his vagueness about how
long the Austens lived there (his calculation is out by about
eighteen months) can be explained in part by the fact that the
letters covering that period were, since Cassandra’s death, with
Lady Knatchbull. 18
According to Caroline, who gives the fullest account of the
treatment of the letters, Aunt Cassandra ‘looked them over and
burnt the greater part, (as she told me), 2 or 3 years before her
own death–– She left, or gave some as legacies to the Nieces–– but
of those that I have seen, several had portions cut out’ (p. 174).
Between May 1801 and July 1809 Jane Austen’s life was, in outward
circumstances at least, at its most unsettled–– various temporary
homes and lodgings in Bath and Southampton, holiday
visits to the seaside, new acquaintances and friendships–– and for
all that potentially exciting period James Edward provides only
four letters. When the Knatchbull cache is added in, there is still
a long silence between 27 May 1801 and 14 September 1804. And
there are earlier hiatuses in the record–– from September 1796 to
April 1798, for example. These gaps coincide with important
personal and family events: in the earlier years, the death of
Cassandra’s fiancé Tom Fowle, James Austen’s second marriage
18
They are nos. 49–67 in Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Le Faye.