A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
this is by no means the implication of what he writes. His detached style
of reference–– ‘There are copy books extant . . . ’––and restricted quotation
is more likely a reflection of his strong desire to protect JA’s reputation
as a writer of mature and sober novels of realism, which might suffer
with the wide publication of early pieces that he felt sure were meant for
family eyes only. Charles’s eldest daughter, Cassy Esten, was helpful, we
know, with material for the Memoir; so there is no reason to suppose that
she did not allow JEAL sight of ‘Volume the First’, since her father’s
death in her possession. An interesting question is why he did not
include extracts from his own inherited manuscript, ‘Volume the Third’.
The Mystery: here printed for the first time from Volume the First. Dedicated
to JA’s father, it may have been written for a family theatrical as
early as 1788; and if so it is certainly one of the earliest pieces to have
survived. The inspiration for its two scenes of whispering was possibly
Sheridan’s burlesque play The Critic (1779), II, i. For Sheridan’s impact
on the juvenilia, see John McAleer, ‘What a Biographer Can Learn about
Jane Austen from Her Juvenilia’, in J. David Grey (ed.), Jane Austen’s
Beginnings: The Juvenilia and Lady Susan (1989), 15.
42 following words of a niece: Caroline Austen. JEAL is here quoting, with
only slight discrepancies, from his sister’s recollections, in MAJA,
included in this collection (see p. 174). The passage is not included in
Ed.1.
43 The family . . . declined to let these early works be published: as it stands in
Ed.2, this sentence is puzzling. It is a reference to what Caroline Austen,
in a letter of 1 April [1869?] to JEAL, then collecting materials for the
Memoir, called the ‘betweenities’, making it clear that she specifically has
in mind Lady Susan, the original manuscript of which was now in Fanny,
Lady Knatchbull’s possession. At this stage, she suggests her brother
might print ‘Evelyn’ from Volume the Third, in his keeping since Aunt
Cassandra’s death, and she continues: ‘What I should deprecate is publishing
any of the “betweenities” when the nonsense was passing away,
and before her wonderful talent had found its proper channel. Lady
Knatchbull has a whole short story they were wishing years ago to make
public–– but were discouraged by others – & I hope the desire has passed
away’ (from the transcript, NPG, RWC/HH, fos. 4–7), included in the
Appendix to this edition). But JEAL was not prepared to risk exposing
the surreal nonsense of ‘Evelyn’, and Ed.1 of his Memoir contained only
a small selection of JA’s tame occasional verses (the lines ‘To the Memory
of Mrs. Lefroy’, two humorous epigrams, and the verses to ‘Lovely
Anna’). It was in the enlarged Ed.2, printed here, that he included, along
with more of JA’s letters, a tiny sample of the juvenilia (‘The Mystery’),
the cancelled chapter of P, a summary of Sanditon (the autograph manuscripts
of both now in Anna Lefroy’s possession), The Watsons (so-named
by JEAL and now owned by his sister Caroline), and Lady Susan, not
from Lady Knatchbull’s original but from a copy. Why the earlier strong