Advice to a writing niece

A couple letters survive where Jane gives advice to her niece Anna, who was writing a novel. Unfortunately, it seems that Anna later destroyed the manuscript in a fit of desperation, but Jane’s advice is still wonderful, even if we don’t have the manuscript she was commenting on.

“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 about in real Life) desperately in Love, & all in vain. But I have no business to judge him so early.”

letter to Anna Austen
September 28, 1814 [108]