Kirjahaku

They were beloved sisters and the best of friends. But Jane and Cassandra Austen suffered the same fate as many of the women of their era. Forced to spend their lives dependent on relatives, both financially and emotionally, the sisters spent their time together trading secrets, challenging each other's opinions, and rehearsing in myriad other ways the domestic dramas that Jane would later bring to fruition in her popular novels. For each sister suffered through painful romantic disappointments--tasting passion, knowing great love, and then losing it--while the other stood witness. Upon Jane's death, Cassandra deliberately destroyed her personal letters, thereby closing the door to the private life of the renowned novelist . . . until now.In Cassandra & Jane, author Jill Pitkeathley ingeniously reimagines the unique and intimate relationship between two extraordinary siblings, reintroducing readers to one of the most intriguing figures in the world of literature, as seen through the eyes of the one person who knew her best.

Drawing on historical fact, Jill Pitkeathley paints a luminous portrait of Jane Austen's free-spirited and seductive cousin, Countess Eliza de Feuillide - from her flirtatious younger years to her great influence on one of the world's favourite authors. Speculated to have been born from a love affair between her mother and the great Warren Hastings, founder of the East India Company and the British Raj, Eliza was a precocious young woman and well-known flirt. Educated in England and France, she went on to marry a French count, Jean de Feuillide, and bear one son with him, who died before reaching adulthood. She later suffered the loss of her husband when Madame la Guillotine claimed him during the early days of the French Revolution. Eliza was close to the Austen family throughout her days, and flirted with both of Jane's brothers profusely, encouraging both men to propose to her upon the death of her husband. She eventually accepted Jane's favourite brother Henry, bringing glamour and excitement on her visits to the Austen's country parsonage in England. With chapters in the voices of Jane, Jane's sister Cassandra, and other family members including Jane's love-sick brothers, Pitkeathley reveals Countess Eliza's influence on one of the world's best loved novelists - and that it is indeed high time her story is told.