Everyone in Jane Austen's family knew she wrote fiction because they had read or heard what she wrote-so why doesn't she ever, before the age of thirty-six, write letters about writing? In the period of her composing the first three novels she made a couple of jokes about herself as a writer: "I am very flattered by your commendation of my last Letter," the twenty-year-old writes to her older sister Cassandra, "for I write only for Fame, and without any view to pecuniary Emolument."1 Five years later, again to Cassandra: "Expect a most agreable Letter; for not being overburdened with subject-(having nothing at all to say)-I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end." She is so funny, but how can we tell she's Jane Austen the stupendous novelist and that these are not the letters Elizabeth Bennet could have written behind the scenes of Pride and Prejudice to her older sister Jane?
Your letter is come; it came indeed twelve lines ago, but I could not stop to acknowledge it before, & I am glad it did not arrive till I had completed my first sentence, because the sentence had been made ever since yesterday, & I think forms a very good beginning.
I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth; I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter.
Her family was impressed enough by her writing for her father to make an attempt in 1797 to get "First Impressions" accepted for publication. After that failed, Jane didn't stop writing-though there was a ten-year stretch after "Susan" (Northanger Abbey) where she didn't complete a book. Did no one appreciate her genius, not even herself? As her nephew, J.E. Austen-Leigh, writes in his Memoir:
Jane Austen lived in entire seclusion from the literary world; neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors. It is probable that she never was in company with any person whose talents or whose celebrity equalled her own; so that her powers never could have been sharpened by collision with superior intellects, nor her imagination aided by their casual suggestions. Whatever she produced was a genuine home-made article. Even during the last two or three years of her life, when her works were rising in the estimation of the public, they did not enlarge her circle of her acquaintance. Few of her readers knew even her name, and none knew more of her than her name. I doubt whether it would be possible to mention any other author of note, whose personal obscurity was so complete ...2
Success didn't come until she was thirty-six, having had her brother act as her agent, and she seemed as surprised as anybody that Sense and Sensibility was a hit and that, shortly after, Pride and Prejudice was also a triumph. So it is not until 1811, more than halfway through her surviving letters, that there's anything more than a hint that she has spent some time writing fiction:
No, indeed, I am never too busy to think of S&S. I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child; & I am much obliged to you for your enquiries. I have had two sheets to correct, but the last only brings us to W.s first appearance. Mrs. K. regrets in the most flattering manner that she must wait till May, but I have scarcely a hope of its being out in June....
But even then, no budding authors come calling on her; no one sends her any work for approval or commentary-because nobody knows who she is; the author of Sense and Sensibility is anonymous, and the author of Pride and Prejudice is advertised only as "the author of Sense and Sensibility." But then finally one of the very people who might have come to her for writing advice even had she not become a successfully published author does come: her niece. And then Jane Austen becomes the very best of correspondence-course writing teachers, as meticulous and interested as Ezra Pound, for instance, a hundred years later, so regularly will be.
What I'll now present, and I hope you'll agree are worth the wait, are Jane Austen's commentaries on and criticisms of Anna Austen (Lefroy)'s manuscript, which novel, we discover with disappointment, Anna destroyed after her aunt's death. Her grand-niece Fanny-Caroline Lefroy explains that:
The story to which most of these letters of Aunt Jane's refer was never finished. It was laid aside for a season because my mother's hands were so full she lacked the leisure to continue it. Her eldest child was born in October [1815], and her second in the Sept. following [1816] and in the longer interval that followed before the birth of the third [1818] her Aunt died and with her must have died all inclination to continue her writing. With no Aunt Jane to read, to criticise and to encourage it was no wonder the MS every word of which was so full of her, remained untouched. Her sympathy which had made the real charm of the occupation was gone and the sense of the loss made it painful to write. The story was laid by for years and then one day in a fit of despondency burnt. I remember sitting on the rug and watching its destruction, amused with the flames and the sparks which kept breaking out in the blackened paper. In later years when I expressed my sorrow that she had destroyed it she said she could never have borne to finish it...
Jane Austen read Anna's novel aloud, as the installments arrived, to Cassandra and to their mother, but as she wrote the letters in response and quoted lines and phrases must have had the manuscript open again before her. The reading aloud by a reader (not the author) is something my favorite and best writing teachers practiced. There is nothing like it for discovering the dead spots, false steps, artificial phrasing, and boring stretches as well as appreciating the silky passages and genuinely hilarious or heartrending moments. Jane Austen also pays attention to the smallest of errors that a proud copy editor would notice and to the bigger (book titles, appropriateness of particular phrases) and biggest of them (character, pacing, focus). She acknowledges the difference between fact and fiction, and how fiction sometimes has to seem truer than fact, and that her taste differs, for instance, from Aunt Cassandra's.
Over the next several pages I try not to interrupt the course of the letters more than occasionally to appreciate, for a moment, particular points Jane Austen makes and how she makes them: she is, not surprisingly, full of tact and wit, and through her comments and suggestions we see revealed, finally, something of how she worked as an author:
[Mid-July?, 1814]
My dear Anna-I am very much obliged to you for sending your MS. It has entertained me extremely, all of us indeed; I read it aloud to your G.M. [grandmother]-& A[un]t C.-and we were all very much pleased.-The Spirit does not droop at all. Sir Tho:-Lady Helena, & St. Julian are very well done-& Cecilia continues to be interesting inspite of her being so amiable.
Is this one of narrative's most difficult problems: How do you keep an "amiable" character interesting?
-It was very fit that you should advance her age. I like the beginning of D. Forester very much-a great deal better than if he had been very Good or very Bad.-A few verbal corrections were all that I felt tempted to make-the principal of them is a speech of St. Julians to Lady Helena-which you will see I have presumed to alter.-As Lady H. is Cecilia's superior, it wd not be correct to talk of her being introduced; Cecilia must be the person introduced-And I do not like a Lover's speaking in the 3d person;-it is too much like the formal part of Lord Orville, & I think it is not natural. If you think differently however, you need not mind me.
Because of Jane Austen's famed sharpness, we might assume she would be less diffident than this. We know she was right-but she knows even better that the only criticism worth taking is the criticism we understand and believe.
-I am impatient for more-& only wait for a safe conveyance to return this Book.-Yours affecly, J.A.
[August 10, 1814]
My dear Anna
I am quite ashamed to find that I have never answered some questions of yours in a former note.-I kept the note on purpose to refer to it at a proper time, & then forgot it.-I like the name "Which is the Heroine?" very well, & I dare say shall grow to like it very much in time-but "Enthusiasm" was something so very superior that every common Title must appear to disadvantage.
(Who has better, simpler, catchier titles than Jane Austen? Yet her literary "grandson"-Anthony Trollope-loved such awkward titles as Anna's "Which is the Heroine?": Can You Forgive Her? Is He Popinjoy? He Knew He Was Right.)
-I am not sensible of any Blunders about Dawlish.. . .
Wednesday 17.-We have just finished the 1st of the 3 Books [chapters] I had the pleasure of receiving yesterday; I read it aloud-& we are all very much amused, & like the work quite as well as ever.-I depend upon getting through another book before dinner, but there is really a great deal of respectable reading in your 48 Pages. I was an hour about it.-I have no doubt that 6 will make a very good sized volume.-You must be quite pleased to have accomplished so much.-I like Lord P.- & his Brother very much;-I am only afraid that Lord P-'s good nature will make most people like him better than he deserves.-The whole Portman Family are very good-& Lady Anne, who was your great dread, you have succeeded particularly well with.-Bell Griffin is just what she should be.-My corrections have not been more important than before;-here & there, we have thought the sense might be expressed in fewer words
(Is that the most tactful criticism of wordiness ever made?)
-and I have scratched out Sir Tho: from walking with the other Men to the Stables &c the very day after his breaking his arm-for though I find your Papa did walk out immediately after his arm was set, I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in a book-& it does not seem to be material that Sir Tho: should go with them.
Yes, dear, it happened-but it won't be believed! Fiction, as a variation goes of the old saying "Truth is stranger than fiction," usually has to seem less strange than life.
-Lyme will not do. Lyme is towards 40 miles distance from Dawlish & would not be talked of there.-Have put Starcross indeed.-If you prefer Exeter, that must be always safe.-I have also scratched out the Introduction between Lord P. & his Brother, & Mr. Griffin. A Country Surgeon (dont tell Mr. C. Lyford) would not be introduced to Men of their rank.-And when Mr. Portman is first brought in, he wd not be introduced as the Honble-That distinction is never mentioned at such times;-at least I believe not.-Now, we have finished the 2nd book-or rather the 5th-I do think you had better omit Lady Helena's postscript;-to those who are acquainted with P&P it will seem an Imitation.
(If your aunt had written Pride and Prejudice, could you resist imitating it in your novel of manners?)
-And your Aunt C. & I both recommend your making a little alteration in the last scene between Devereux F. & Lady Clanmurray & her Daughter. We think they press him too much-more than sensible Women or well-bred Women would do. Lady C. at least, should have discretion enough to be sooner satisfied with his determination of not going with them.-I am very pleased with Egerton as yet.-I did not expect to like him, but I do; & Susan is a very nice little animated Creature-but St. Julian is the delight of one's Life. He is quite interesting.-The whole of his Break-off with Lady H. is very well done.-
Yes-Russel Square is a very proper distance from Berkeley St-We are reading the last book.-They must be two days going from Dawlish to Bath; They are nearly 100 miles apart.
Thursday. We finished it last night, after our return from drinking tea at the Gt House.-The last Chapter does not please us quite so well, we do not thoroughly like the Play; perhaps from having had too much of Plays in that way lately.-And we think you had better not leave England. Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the Manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false representations. Stick to Bath & the Foresters. There you will be quite at home.
Rule: Keep the imagination free for the important things!
- Your Aunt C does not like desultory novels, & is rather fearful yours will be too much so, that there will be too frequent a change from one set of people to another, & that circumstances will be sometimes introduced of apparent consequence, which will lead to nothing.-It will not be so great an objection to me, if it does. I allow much more Lattitude than She does-& think Nature & Spirit cover many sins of a wandering story-and People in general do not care so much about it-for your comfort.
The graces of fiction: "Nature & Spirit." If we don't have prejudices about what it is writing is supposed to be, aren't we glad to read anything that contains "Nature & Spirit"? Recall, also, one of her initial remarks on the manuscript: "The Spirit does not droop at all." Rule 2: Don't let your spirits droop!3
I should like to have had more of Devereux. I do not feel enough acquainted with him.-You were afraid of meddling with him I dare say.-I like your sketch of Lord Clanmurray, and your picture of the two poor young girls' enjoyments is very good.-I have not yet noticed St. Julian's serious conversation with Cecilia, but I liked it exceedingly;-what he says about the madness of otherwise sensible Women, on the subject of their Daughters coming out, is worth its weight in gold.-I do not see that the language sinks. Pray go on.
Yours very affec:ly J. Austen
[P.S.] Twice you put Dorsetshire for Devonshire. I have altered it.-Mr Griffin must have lived in Devonshire; Dawlish is half way down the County.
[Sept. 9-18, 1814]
My dear Anna
We have been very much amused by your 3 books, but I have a good many criticisms to make-more than you will like.
(It's kind to prepare your pupil for the rough going over she's about to get.)
We are not satisfied with Mrs F.'s settling herself as Tenant & near Neighbour to such a Man as Sir T.H. without having some other inducement to go there; she ought to have some friend living thereabouts to tempt her. A woman, going with two girls just growing up, into a Neighbourhood where she knows nobody but one Man, of not very good character, is an awkwardness which so prudent a woman as Mrs F would not be likely to fall into. Remember, she is very prudent;-you must not let her act inconsistently.-Give her a friend, & let that friend be invited to meet her at the Priory, & we shall have no objection to her dining there as she does; but otherwise, a woman in her situation would hardly go there, before she had been visited by other Families.-I like the scene itself, the Miss Lesleys, Lady Anne, & the Music, very much.-Lesley is a noble name.-Sir T.H. You always do very well; I have only taken the liberty of expunging one phrase of his, which would not be allowable. "Bless my Heart"-It is too familiar & inelegant. your G.M. is more disturbed at Mrs F.'s not returning the Egertons visit sooner, than anything else. They ought to have called at the Parsonage before Sunday.-
You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right hand & left.-
Another tactful criticism! Jane Austen must have been careful about steering clear of this trap: I can't think of any instances in her fiction where the "place" is described too minutely.
Mrs F. is not careful enough of Susan's health;-Susan ought not to be walking out so soon after Heavy rains, taking long walks in the dirt. An anxious Mother would not suffer it.-I like your Susan very much indeed, she is a sweet Creature, her playfulness of fancy is very delightful. I like her as she is now exceedingly, but I am not so well satisfied with her behaviour to George R. At first she seemed all over attachment & feeling, & afterwards to have none at all; she is so extremely composed at the Ball, & so well-satisfied apparently with Mr Morgan. She seems to have changed her Character.
"She seems" is the part of that criticism that resounds. Anna either has to go back and show why Susan changed, or she has to modify Susan's "behaviour to George R."
The next stretch is one of the more famous passages from her letters. It's often quoted as a way to allow Jane Austen to sum up her own novels or, on the other hand, to be quibbled with or even discredited. I like it, and just by her saying it convinces me that "3 or 4 Families in a County Village" (or, being that my students and I are city dwellers, "in a neighborhood or on a street") is "the very thing to work on":
-You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life;-3 or 4 Families in a County Village is the very thing to work on-& I hope you will write a great deal more, & make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged. You are but now coming to the heart & beauty of your book; till the heroine grows up, the fun must be imperfect-but I expect a great deal of entertainment from the next 3 or 4 books, & I hope you will not resent these remarks by sending me no more. . . . 4
She seems as encouraging as any teacher making serious criticisms could be.
Your last Chapter is very entertaining-the conversation on Genius &c. Mr St J.-& Susan both talk in character and very well.-In some former parts, Cecilia is perhaps a little too solemn & good, but upon the whole, her disposition is very well opposed to Susan's-her want of Imagination is very natural.-I wish you could make Mrs F. talk more, but she must be difficult to manage & make entertaining, because there is so much good common sense & propriety about her that nothing can be very broad. Her Economy & her Ambition must not be staring.-The Papers left by Mrs Fisher is very good.-Of course, one guesses something.-I hope when you have written a great deal more you will be equal to scratching out some of the past.-The scene with Mrs. Mellish, I should condemn; it is prosy & nothing to the purpose-& indeed, the more you can find in your heart to curtail between Dawlish & Newton Priors, the better I think it will be.-One does not care for girls till they are grown up. . . .
(And yet, what is "grown up"? Austen makes us care for Marianne Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility and Catherine of Northanger Abbey-and neither is yet eighteen.)
Sunday 18th- . . . I shall be very happy to receive more of your work, if more is ready; & you write so fast, that I have great hopes Mr D. will come freighted back with such a Cargo as not all his Hops or his Sheep could equal the value of.
[Sept. 28, 1814]
My dear Anna
I hope you do not depend on having your book back again immediately. I keep it that your G:Mama may hear it-for it has not been possible yet to have any public reading. I have read it to your Aunt Cassandra however-in our own room at night . . . and with a great deal of pleasure. We like the first chapter extremely-with only a little doubt whether Ly Helena is not almost too foolish. The matrimonial Dialogue is very good certainly.-I like Susan as well as ever-& begin now not to care at all about Cecilia-she may stay at Easton Court as long as she likes.-Henry Mellish I am afraid will be too much in the common Novel style-a handsome, amiable, unexceptionable Young Man (such as do not much abound in real Life) desperately in Love, & all in vain. But I have no business to judge him so early.-Jane Egerton is a very natural, comprehendable Girl-& the whole of her acquaintance with Susan, & Susan's Letter to Cecilia, very pleasing & quite in character.-But Miss Egerton does not entirely satisfy us. She is too formal & solemn, we think, in her advice to her Brother not to fall in love; & it is hardly like a sensible Woman; it is putting it into his head.-We should like a few hints from her better.-We feel really obliged to you for introducing a Lady Kenrick, it will remove the greatest fault in the work, & I give you credit for considerable forbearance as an Author in adopting so much of our opinion.-I expect high fun about Mrs Fisher & Sir Thomas.-You have been perfectly right in telling Ben of your work, & I am very glad to hear how much he likes it. His encouragement & approbation must be quite "beyond everything."-I do not at all wonder at his not expecting to like anybody so well as Cecilia at first, but shall be surprised if he does not become a Susan-ite in time.-Devereux Forester's being ruined by his Vanity is extremely good; but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of Dissipation". I do not object to the Thing, but I cannot bear the expression;-it is such thorough novel slang-and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened.
That is Jane Austen, and only Jane Austen!
-Indeed I did very much like to know Ben's opinion. . . . Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones.-It is not fair.-He has Fame & Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.-I do not like him, & do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it-but fear I must. . . . I have made up my mind to like no Novels really, but Miss Edgeworth's, Yours & my own.
What can you do with Egerton to increase the interest for him? I wish you cd contrive something, some family occurrence to draw out his good qualities more-some distress among Brothers or Sister to releive5by the sale of his Curacy-something to [take] him mysteriously away, & then heard of at York or Edinburgh-in an old great Coat.-I would not seriously recommend anything Improbable, but if you cd invent something spirited for him, it wd have a good effect.-He might lend all his money to Captn Morris-but then he wd be a great fool if he did. Cannot the Morrises quarrel, & he reconcile them?-Excuse the liberty I take in these suggestions. . .
Austen is going very far with her criticisms-she's now using her own imagination to solve some of the problems Anna has written herself into. She is doing what we teachers can't resist doing when our imaginations have been activated: becoming involved ourselves in the creation. Austen's is invaluable criticism, and yet it also crosses the line. Our students look at us with gratitude or resentment (maybe a mixture of both) for having invaded their work-and when we do, just as Jane Austen does here, perhaps we need to "excuse the liberty I take in these suggestions."
[November 30, 1814]
I have been very far from finding your Book an Evil I assure you; I read it immediately-& with great pleasure. I think you are going on very well. The description of Dr Griffin & Lady Helena's unhappiness is very good, just what was likely to be.-I am curious to know what the end of them will be: The name of Newton-Priors is really invaluable!-I never met with anything superior to it.-It is delightful.-One could live upon the name of Newton-Priors for a twelve-month.
What could be a better compliment for a budding writer than to have pleased Jane Austen's ear?
-Indeed, I do think you get on very fast. I wish other people of my acquaintance could compose as rapidly.-I am pleased with the Dog scene, & with the whole of George & Susan's Love; but am more particularly struck with your serious conversations &c.-They are very good throughout.-St Julian's History was quite a surprise to me; You had not very long known it yourself I suspect [Is it good to have it recognized that you have on the spot invented something?]-but I have no objection to make to the circumstance-it is very well told-& his having been in love with the Aunt, gives Cecilia an additional Interest with him. I like the Idea;-a very proper compliment to an Aunt! . . .
And so ends Jane Austen's commentary on Anna's book.
She had a literary exchange with another niece, but, compared to her serious involvement with Anna, she hardly more than jokes. Caroline Austen was twelve years old. "I wish I could finish Stories as fast you can," wrote Jane Austen (who did not think very highly of speed6). "I am much obliged to you for the sight of Olivia, & think you have done for her very well; but the good for nothing Father, who was the real author of all her Faults & Sufferings, should not escape unpunished.-I hope he hung himself, or took the sur-name of Bone or underwent some direful penance or other."
To her twenty-year-old nephew, James Edward Austen, who fifty years later would write his Memoirs of her, she confides, not quite seriously, as one writer to another:
Uncle Henry writes very superior Sermons.-You & I must try to get hold of one or two, & put them into our Novels;-it would be a fine help to a volume; & we could make our Heroine read it aloud of a Sunday Evening . . . By the bye, my dear Edward, I am quite concerned for the loss your Mother mentions in her Letter; two Chapters & a half to be missing is monstrous! It is well that I have not been at Steventon lately, & therefore cannot be suspected of purloining them;-two strong twigs & a half towards a Nest of my own, would have been something.-I do not think however that any theft of that sort would be really useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety & Glow?-How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?
I have no idea what became of James Edward Austen's novel, but it is hard not to imagine something grotesque, or to wish that Jane Austen had had more time to "work with so fine a Brush." She died in 1817 at the age of forty-one.
© 2008 by Bob Blaisdell.