Jane Austen (1775–1817), Autograph letter signed, dated Bath, 2 June 1799, to Cassandra Austen
, Purchased by J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1920
, MA 977.4
"My Cloak is come home, & here follows the pattern of its' lace. . . . I like it very much," writes Austen to Cassandra while on a six-week visit to the fashionable city of Bath with her parents. This letter is the earliest in the collection to show excisions, presumably by Cassandra after Austen's death, before she bequeathed the letters to their niece Fanny. Biographers suspect that the censored sections of the letters were either overly critical of family members or described indelicate physical ailments too vividly.