The Thrilling Evidence of Jane Austen’s Imagination
Spirited (and gossipy) letters and manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum puncture myths about the writer’s rise to literary fame.
By Sarah Lyall
But the show, which marks the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, persuasively puts much of its focus on her work — what she did and how and why she did it. Providing a vigorous counterargument to the image of Austen as a retiring spinster who wrote as a kind of amusing pastime, the show uses letters, manuscripts and more to trace the trajectory of her career and illustrate how seriously she took her vocation.
It’s thrilling to be presented with the evidence. Here, for instance, is a tiny scrap of paper on which Austen listed the “profits from my novels.” Here’s one of three books in which she copied out some of her teenage writings — proof that she channeled her imagination into fiction, and considered how it might look in books, even as a girl. And here’s a heavily emended page — full of crossed-out lines and inserted words — from an unfinished novel (posthumously published as “The Watsons”) showing Austen to be a diligent rewriter as well as a writer...
It shows how Austen’s family supported her work and “examines how it was possible for Austen to publish her now-beloved novels when women generally were not permitted to become writers,” Stinchcomb, the Morgan’s curator of literary and historical manuscripts, said...
But there’s plenty here to show that she and her family fought to get her books published, and cared how they were perceived. One delightful document sets out various friends’ and relatives’ “opinions of ‘Emma,’” as Austen wrote at the top. It’s like a 19th century entry in Goodreads, if the readers’ critiques came exclusively from the writer’s intimate circle....
Her letters are spirited, gossipy, irreverent and witty. “What dreadful Hot weather we have!” she wrote to Cassandra in 1796. “It keeps one in a continual state of Inelegance.” In another letter, she expressed her approval of an acquaintance by saying that “she admires Camilla” — a reference to a novel by Fanny Burney, whose work Austen adored — “& drinks no cream in her Tea.” In a third, she provides Cassandra with a Monty Python-esque arboreal report — “I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive” — and comments on a recent naval battle in which she had no personal connection to the victims. “How horrible it is to have so many killed!” she writes. “And what a blessing it is that one cares for none of them!”...
It’s exhilarating to see Austen the famous writer emerging from all this material, but equally moving to find how beloved she was as a person. I found myself lingering over a letter from Cassandra, her closest companion through her life and final illness, to their niece Fanny a few days after Jane’s death. She was a beautiful writer, too.
“She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow,” Cassandra wrote. “It is as if I had lost a part of myself.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/arts/design/jane-austen-show-morgan-library.html