Cassandra Austen is one of English literature’s most notorious vandals. Towards the end of her life, in an act of near incomprehensible sabotage, the elder Austen sister burnt swathes of correspondence written by Jane, who had died almost 30 years earlier in 1817. Just 160 letters, out of the thousands Jane is thought to have written, and which together almost certainly would have provided invaluable information about one of our most inscrutable novelists, escaped the flames. This fiery obliteration has become Cassandra’s defining act – and in the subsequent centuries it has left Austen fans and biographers weeping in frustration.
How could Jane’s closest confidante wipe out such a vital part of her writerly legacy, depriving future readers of the chance to better know and understand the woman behind those six exquisite books? What was Cassandra trying to hide? These questions are at the heart of Miss Austen, the BBC’s star-studded, four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby’s bestselling 2020 novel, yet it primarily seeks to understand Cassandra’s actions through the startlingly close bond she shared with her sister. That sibling relationship, which both inspired and enabled Jane’s writing career, is one of the most extraordinarily intimate in all of Western literature. “I think their love for each other [went] above and beyond most people’s,” says Keeley Hawes who plays Cassandra. “It’s quite unusual, I think, that depth of love and devotion.”
