ABSTRACT
The publication of Jane Austen’s letters within the family project of making and remaking her image for the nineteenth century demonstrates how the survival pattern of correspondence inflects future life writing. The chapter considers the context for Brabourne’s edition created from three strands: first from the distribution of papers bequeathed by Cassandra Austen at her death in 1845 and second from the appearance of Austen-Leigh’s Memoir in 1870. The third contributing factor was the life writing produced by Sarah Tytler and reviewers of the letters in print, such as Margaret Oliphant, Mary Augusta Ward and H.F. Chorley. As this process unfolded, the influence of Frances Burney’s reputation on Austen’s brought Brabourne to the pinnacle of critical concern demonstrated by the Letters. The chapter finally traces the impact of the letters in their new context where a female circle of correspondents challenged the surrounding corporate public image of the nineteenth-century family record. In this the variants of life writing reveal how a woman writer’s words might defy biographical intervention.
