Miss Austen

"A deeply imagined and deeply moving novel" imagines the life of Jane Austen's sister and confidante, Cassandra (Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times–bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club).

Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?


England, 1840. Two decades after the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her family friends, the Fowles. In a dusty corner of the vicarage, there is a cache of Jane's letters that Cassandra is desperate to find. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister's legacy to the flames?


Moving back and forth between the vicarage and Cassandra's vibrant memories of her years with Jane, interwoven with Jane's brilliantly reimagined lost letters, Miss Austen is the untold story of the most important person in Jane's life. With extraordinary empathy, emotional complexity, and wit, Gill Hornby finally gives Cassandra her due, bringing to life a woman as captivating as any Austen heroine.


"You can't help feeling that Jane would have approved." —The Guardian

"Extraordinary and heart-wrenching. . . . A gift to all Austen lovers." —Lara Prescott, New York Times–bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept