Jane Austen family letters offer ‘deeply personal’ insight into author’s world

 

 Leigh Family Papers, unpublished letters and manuscripts from Jane Austen’s mother’s family, 1686–1823, 1866. Click to enlarge. Photograph: © The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

 

The Huntington Library in California has acquired 52 unpublished letters, poems and other material from six generations of the Leigh family. Austen’s mother was Cassandra Leigh, and the novelist visited her Leigh family in Adlestrop several times, with some believing that the setting of Mansfield Park is partly drawn from the Gloucestershire village.

The letters are “deeply personal”, said Vanessa Wilkie, curator of English historical manuscripts at the Huntington, and although they do not mention the author of Pride and Prejudice specifically, they “will help people develop a more vivid understanding of Austen’s immediate world”. Most of Austen’s own letters were burned by her sister, after her death.

Acquired from a UK rare book and manuscript dealer, the correspondence reveals “the intimate, mundane, playful, and tragic aspects of the times”, said Wilkie. “You get a dear mother, affectionate father, dear son, dear cousin, dear brother, dear little niece, dear Madame, and even A. Nonymous, who writes a really funny letter that cautions against the dangers of falling in love with Miss Fortune.” Read more: theguardian/jane-austen-family-letters-huntington-library-1