“I hsiw uoy a yppah wen raey … Siht si elttil Yssac’s yadhtrib, dna ehs si eerht sraey dlo”

Jane Austen was born 16 December 1775 in Hampshire, England. Birthdays were important events in Jane Austen’s life – those of others perhaps more so than her own. The first of her letters which has come down to us was a birthday letter, addressed to her sister Cassandra, who had turned 23 that day. “I hope you will live twenty-three years longer,” Jane Austen wrote on 9 January 1796, immediately adding that “Mr Tom Lefroy’s birthday was yesterday”, and that in celebration of this, they had “had an exceeding good ball last night” (Letter 1). Tom Lefroy was a young man Jane Austen was very much in love with at that time, though he would have been too young for anything serious to have come of it. Another birthday letter to Cassandra survives, written three years later: “I wish you Joy of your Birthday twenty times over” (Letter 17, 8−9 January 1799).
Read more: blog.oup/12/birthday-letters-jane-austen