CHAPTER I - GODMERSHAM AND GOODNESTONE

Summary

My great-aunt, Jane Austen, died on July 18,1817. As circumstances over which I had no control prevented my appearance in the world until twelve years later, I was unfortunately debarred from that personal acquaintance with her and her surroundings which would have enabled me to describe both with greater accuracy of detail than I can at present hope to attain. I feel, however, that I have some claim to undertake the task which I am about to commence, from the fact that my mother, the eldest daughter of the Edward Austen so often alluded to in the accompanying letters, was the favourite niece of Aunt Jane, and that the latter's name has been a household word in my family from the earliest period of my recollection. It is of my mother that Jane Austen writes to her sister Cassandra (October 7, 1808), ‘I am greatly pleased with your account of Fanny; I found her in the summer just what you describe, almost another sister, and could not have supposed that a neice would ever have been so much to me. She is quite after one's own heart.’ And it is to my mother that her Aunt Cassandra writes in 1817, after her sister's death: ‘I believe she was better known to you than to any human being besides myself.’