The Sunday Times bestselling novel, set to be a major TV dramaYou cant help feeling that Jane would have approved. OBSERVERSo good, so intelligent, so clever, so entertaining - I adored it. CLAIRE TOMALINThroughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all1840 twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her familys friends, the Fowles. She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she can never allow to be revealed. As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Janes history, and her own. And she faces a stark choice should she act to protect Janes reputation, or leave the contents of the letters to go unguarded into posterityBased on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics, Miss Austen is a wonderfully original and emotionally complex novel about the loves and lives of Cassandra and Jane Austen. The perfect book to wrap yourself around on a dark night STYLISTWithout romanticising its period setting or underplaying the precariousness of any womans position in this society, it celebrates unexamined lives, sisterhood and virtues such as kindness and loyalty SUNDAY TIMESThis is a deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts. KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of The Jane Austen BookclubIt wont surprise me if this is one of the books of the year. Its a delight, one of those that you dont want to end. RTEA charming novel. . . capturing the spirit of the brilliant sardonic Jane, and reminding the reader of how brutal life was for women in Austens era, its an ingenious and affecting embroidery on the fact of the authors life. SUNDAY MIRRORMiss Austen is ingenious . . . With flashbacks and wonderful domestic detail, Hornby brings to life the Austen family, using the known to speculate on what might have been. THE TIMES Audio Book of the WeekExtraordinary and heart-wrenching, Miss Austen transported me from page one. A gift to all Austen lovers. LARA PRESCOTT, author of The Secrets We KeptGill Hornby ingeniously imagines what Cassandra Austens own life might have been like, both before and after Janes untimely death, casting a different light on the familiar biographical picture without in any way distorting it. DEIRDRE LE FAYE, editor of Jane Austens LettersTender and touching . . . Hornby deftly describes the psychological toll that such uncertainly took on Jane, and movingly celebrates the fortitude of Cassandra whose greatest love was her sister DAILY MAILUtterly absorbing. The lives of the Austen sisters are recreated with a brilliant sureness of touch that can only be achieved by deep study of the period. ARTEMIS COOPERDelightful. . . It reads just like an Austen novel so you get the double whammy of being a new book with an old feel SUE RYAN, founder of Henley Lit Fest
