A fresh approach to building the life of Jane Austen through her letters, demonstrating that a well-known life can be reframed by being grounded in evidence of that life

The Life of the Author: Jane Austen takes readers on a literary-biographical journey through Austen's life in letters. Using a unique non-linear approach, author Catherine Delafield explores three frames for Austen's literary lifefamily, correspondents, and fictionto suggest new pathways for the interpretation of life writing about one of the most popular and influential English novelists of all time. Delafield addresses multiple aspects of Austen's epistolary practice and the ways in which her letters, juvenile writings, and unpublished novels have been overlaid on both biography and fiction.

Throughout the text, special attention is paid to the changing view of womens correspondence as personal record and to Cassandra Austen's role as editor of her sisters surviving letters. The book opens with selected readings from Austen's letters and a review of the family treatment of the life. Subsequent chapters discuss the female circle of correspondents in both extant and missing letters, the letter content and structure of Austen's novels, the use of letters as representations of places and spaces based on Austen's own lived experience of epistolary communication, and more.

Discusses how the letters, correspondents, and novels supplement Jane Austens fiction and substantiate her lifeHighlights Austen's use of the letter as a conversation on paper, rather than as an autobiographical toolExplores the letters within Austen's fictional writing as well as recipes, accounts, and needlework with links to the lettersFeatures a select chronology using letters as landmarks, tables representing surviving letters by correspondent, and family trees tracing names and relationships

The Life of the Author: Jane Austenis an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses on the novel, women's writing, British writing, and life writing, as well as for general readers with interest in gaining new perspectives on Austen's chronological life and literary output.

Catherine Delafield is an independent scholar based in Devon, UK. She has previously taught at the University of Leicester and has published on women's life writing, diaries, and the serialization of popular fiction. She is the author ofWomen's Diaries as Narrative in the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Serialization and the Novel in Mid-Victorian Magazines, and Women's Letters as Life Writing 1840-1885.

List of Figures vi

A Note on Texts and Abbreviations vii

Acknowledgements viii

Select Chronology of Letters ix

Introduction: A Life in Letters 1

1 Austen's Life in Letters 11

2 Austen's Letters in Family 'Lives' 40

3 Cassandra and Correspondence 62

4 The Sisterhood of the Letters 86

5 Novels in Letters: Letters into Novels 112

6 Letters and Novels: Places and Spaces 138

7 Letters and Patchwork: Scraps in the Life 163

Conclusion: Letters and Biography: Prisms, Kaleidoscopes, 'Elephants& Kangaroons' 182

Bibliography 186

Index 202