The Sunday Times bestselling novel that delves into why Cassandra burned a treasure trove of letters written by her sister, Jane Austen. Now a major series on BBC One and BBC iPlayer starring Keeley Hawes in 2025. Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all? 1840- twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family's friends, the Fowles. She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she can never allow to be revealed. As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Jane's history, and her own. And she faces a stark choice- should she act to protect Jane's reputation, or leave the contents of the letters to go unguarded into posterity? Based on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics, Miss Austen is a wonderfully original and emotionally complex novel about the loves and lives of Cassandra and Jane Austen.

Details

ISBN13: 9781787469778
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 416
Edition: Media tie-in
Publication Date: 04 Feb 2025
Publisher: Cornerstone
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 197(H)x129(L)x25(W)287
Weight (gm): 287

Author Biography

Gill Hornby is the author of the novels The Hive and All Together Now, as well as The Story of Jane Austen, a biography of Austen for young readers. Her subsequent novels, Miss Austen and Godmersham Park, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and Miss Austen will be a four-part BBC adaptation starring Keeley Hawes as Cassandra Austen. She lives in West Berkshire with her husband and their four children.

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