When Jane Austen died in July 1817, elderly simply 41, she was once buried in Winchester Cathedral. I moved to town in 2025. As a lecturer in English literature, I’ve lengthy researched and taught Austen’s novels, so I used to be prepared to discuss with her ultimate resting position.
Austen’s grave bears the phrases: “The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.”
I used to be stunned that the epitaph makes no point out of her writing. I used to be additionally amazed to find a basket through her graveside which was once overflowing with handwritten letters addressed to Austen.
A snappy look via this correspondence confirmed me that the penfriends each preferred her paintings and sought her recommendation on their love lifestyles. I discovered it interesting that folks would search dating steerage from a lady who now not best had died over 200 years in the past, however had herself by no means been married.
Whilst her novels themselves tension the significance of marriage for a tender girl at the moment, Austen was once best engaged to be married for one evening, as she retracted her acceptance inside of 24 hours.
Studying the letters that were left through Austen’s grave nearly felt like an intrusion. Many had been very private and addressed her as a long-lost pal. One of the letters had been poetical and tried to write down in Austen’s personal taste.
This text is a part of a sequence commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s delivery. Regardless of having revealed best six books, she is among the best-known authors in historical past. Those articles discover the legacy and lifetime of this fantastic author.
One letter said:
I will’t imagine I’m proper right here, in entrance of you. On this second I’m occupied with the 10-year-old me, once I came upon books had been my interest. You had been probably the most first authors I began studying and also you made me fall in love with books, particularly Pleasure and Prejudice. The want I need to specific now could be to develop into like the ladies you described. Each and every of them gave a contribution to making my present character. I simply sought after you to understand that you’ve got been my convenience position when lifestyles was once dangerous to me.
Some other poignant letter mirrored that: “Long is the reading. Long is the journey in this life.”
Possibly the very attributes that had been emphasized on Austen’s headstone impressed her readers to hunt this “intimate connection” together with her, through writing letters which appealed to the “extraordinary endowments of her mind”. The truth that Austen it sounds as if had a “sweetness of temper” and the “warmest love” could have recommended to her fanatics that she can be an appropriate shoulder to cry on – somebody who may just be offering solace and steerage when occasions had been arduous.
The letters at Austen’s graveside.
Naomi Walker, CC BY-SA
Having a look in the course of the letters within the cathedral jogged my memory of studying the surviving correspondence between Austen and her family and friends. She steadily gave dating recommendation in her letters to her nieces, so most likely it was once now not so unexpected in spite of everything that readers would search an identical steerage from her about their very own lives.
Austen prompt her niece, Fanny Knight, in a letter dated November 30 1814, referring to a wedding proposal that: “I dare not say, ‘determine to accept him.’ The risk is too great for you, unless your own Sentiments prompt it.”
She additionally identified that “I am at present more impressed with the possible Evil that may arise to You from engaging yourself to him – in word or mind – than with anything else.”
Austen proves herself to be a worthy aunt with this straight-talking and forthright dating recommendation. With some modernising of the langauge, she may just also be unsuitable for a present-day agony aunt – her phrases of knowledge are simply as pertinent nowadays as they had been then.
The truth that letters are positioned through Austen’s resting position in Winchester Cathedral now not best establishes a connection between the creator and where the place she in brief lived but in addition presentations a persevered hyperlink between Austen and her readers. In an increasingly more technological international, I to find this very reassuring because it emphasises the ongoing energy and affect of literature in our lives.
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