Category Archives: niece Anna Austen

June 16, 2008 · 2:01 pm

A Vile World

Lovely lunch with JASNA - DC this weekend — thanks to all who came. It was an honor to be asked to speak. Nothing Vile about it!

“We have used Anna as ill as we could, by not letting him [Jane’s nephew James-Edward, Anna’s half brother] leave us before tomorrow morning, but it is a Vile World, we are all for Self & I expected no better from any of us.”

Letter to her niece Caroline [all three were her brother James’s children — Anna from his first marriage, James-Edward and Caroline from his second]
January 23, 1817 [149]

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Filed under Austen family, Humor, Letters, Morality, nephew James Edward, niece Anna Austen, niece Caroline, Sarcasm

February 6, 2008 · 8:00 am

Parades of happiness

“We have heard nothing fresh from Anna. I trust she is very comfortable in her new home. Her Letters have been very sensible & satisfactory, with no parade of happiness, which I liked them the better for.-I have often known young married Women write in a way I did not like, in that respect.”

letter to her niece Fanny (Edward’s daughter), about another niece, Anna (James’s daughter), who had just married Ben Lefroy
November 18, 1814 [109]

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Filed under Austen family, Happiness, Letters, Marriage, niece Anna Austen

July 17, 2007 · 8:00 am

A vortex of dissipation

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More advice from Jane to her writing niece:

“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.”

letter to Anna Austen
September 28, 1814 [108]

Jane was writing from her home at Chawton, which is now Jane Austen’s House Museum.

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Filed under Austen family, Humor, Letters, niece Anna Austen, Writing