A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Note on the Texts
additional Vol. to Bentley’s last Edition of the novels.’ 1 In token
of this, the lettering on the spine of the binding of the second
edition misleadingly read Lady Susan &c. Marketed as the sixth
volume in Richard Bentley’s ‘Favourite Novels’ reissue of the
complete set of Jane Austen’s novels, the Memoir became in outward
appearance Lady Susan &c., signalling the importance
placed at this time on the appended fictions over biography. With
editions of these previously unpublished writings now widely
available, there is little justification for following what was in 1871
a commercial strategy. On the other hand, a modern market
which in one recent year alone (1997) saw three substantial biographies
of Jane Austen competing for attention, suggests that
Austen-Leigh’s account of a life ‘singularly barren’ of events
compels ever more interest.
I have included with Austen-Leigh’s Memoir four others: the
account written by Jane’s brother Henry Austen to accompany
the posthumous joint publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
in 1818; Henry’s reworking of the same materials to preface
the edition of Sense and Sensibility issued by Bentley in 1833
as No. 23 of his ‘Standard Novels’ series; Anna Lefroy’s ‘Recollections
of Aunt Jane’, written in 1864 and first published in
1988; and Caroline Austen’s My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir,
written in 1867 and first published in 1952. Henry’s two biographies
are printed from the first editions of 1818 and 1833
respectively. Anna Lefroy’s ‘Recollections’ are taken from the
surviving autograph manuscript in the Austen-Leigh archive,
Hampshire Record Office, and Caroline Austen’s memoir is
reproduced from the 1952 edition which R. W. Chapman prepared
for the Jane Austen Society, corrected against the manuscript
held in Jane Austen’s House, Chawton. Further editorial
and bibliographical information can be found in the headnotes
accompanying the annotations to each text. An Appendix prints a
few brief recollections, mainly from family letters preserved as
1
From a letter of 28 Nov. 1870, included in M. A. DeWolfe Howe, ‘A Jane Austen
Letter With Other “Janeana” From an Old Book of Autographs’, Yale Review, 15
(1925–6), 333.