Miss Austen

NOW A MAJOR SERIES ON BBC ONE AND BBC iPLAYER STARRING KEELEY HAWES IN 2025<BR><BR>'You can't help feeling that Jane would have approved' Observer<BR>'So good, so intelligent, so clever, so entertaining - I adored it' Claire Tomalin<BR>'Celebrates unexamined lives, sisterhood and virtues such as kindness and loyalty' Sunday Times<BR>'Sparkling novel' Daily Mail<BR>'I read the book and laughed and sobbed' Keeley Hawes<BR>___________<BR><BR>Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all?<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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?<BR><BR>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.<BR>___________<BR><BR>'The perfect book to wrap yourself around on a dark night' STYLIST<BR><BR>'This is a deeply imagined and deeply moving novel' KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of The Jane Austen Bookclub<BR><BR>'It's a delight, one of those that you don't want to end.' RTE<BR><BR>'A charming novel' SUNDAY MIRROR<BR><BR>'Hornby brings to life the Austen family, using the known to speculate on what might have been' THE TIMES Audio Book of the Week<BR><BR>'Extraordinary and heart-wrenching' LARA PRESCOTT, author of The Secrets We Kept<BR><BR>'Gill Hornby ingeniously imagines what Cassandra Austen's own life might have been like.' DEIRDRE LE FAYE, editor of Jane Austen's Letters<BR><BR>'Tender and touching' DAILY MAIL<BR><BR>'Utterly absorbing' ARTEMIS COOPER<BR><BR>'Delightful' SUE RYAN, founder of Henley Lit Fest<BR><BR>___________<BR><BR>Loved Miss Austen? Check out Gill Hornby's wonderful new novel, The Elopement!