What Did the Real Jane Austen Look Like?
On the 18th inst. at Winchester, Miss Jane Austen, youngest daughter of the late Rev. George Austen, Rector of Steventon, in Hampshire, and the Authoress of Emma, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. Her manners were most gentle; her affections ardent; her candor was not to be surpassed, and she lived and died as became a humble Christian. (Hampshire Chronicle and Courier, July 22, 1817)
She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself.
That’s Cassandra Austen writing to her niece Fanny Knight on the death of her beloved sister Jane Austen, who died 202 years ago this month (July 18, 1817). She was only 41 and left behind six novels, some letters (she and her family were prolific letter writers but her sister destroyed many of Jane's after her death), a handful of manuscripts, a few belongings, and much speculation about her life.
Austen herself remains a mystery in many respects, and in particular we don’t really know what she looked like. She probably didn’t look much like Anne Hathaway or Olivia Wilde, but years later her nephew and niece described her:
