Collections | Literary & Historical Manuscripts

Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Autograph letter signed, dated Godmersham, 20–22 June 1808, to Cassandra Austen
22.6 cm
Purchased by J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1920; MA 977.16
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Writing over the course of three days, Austen acknowledges receiving another letter from Cassandra in the meantime: "You are very amiable & very clever to write such long Letters; every page of yours has more lines than this, & every line more words than the average of mine. I am quite ashamed—but you have certainly more little events than we have." The letter is full of little events: "Mr Waller is dead, I see;—I cannot grieve about it, nor perhaps can his Widow very much," and "I want to hear of your gathering Strawberries, we have had them three times here." She reports that she is not enjoying Walter Scott's newest creation Marmion, an epic poem about a sixteenth-century battle between the English and the Scots, although she suspects she should be.

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