Jane Austen's Letters

This volume collects the surviving correspondence of Jane Austen, written mainly to her sister Cassandra from the 1790s until 1817. The letters move among Steventon, Bath, Southampton, Godmersham, Chawton, and London visits, and they report balls, clothes, money, illnesses, and the business of publishing. Household news and irony sit beside brief remarks on the novels as they are drafted and printed. Many letters were destroyed, so the record is uneven. The book is a private letter sequence, not a finished autobiography and not a substitute for the fiction.

Bound in silk printed with a wallpaper design. Dark red endpapers and slipcase.