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Title details for Miss Austen by Gill Hornby - Available

Miss Austen

A Novel of the Austen Sisters

by Gill Hornby
Juliet Stevenson
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

"In a cultured, melodious voice, narrator Juliet Stevenson becomes Miss Cassandra Austen, older sister to Jane and keeper of her memory." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner
For fans of Jo Baker's Longbourn, a witty, poignant audiobook about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane.
Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?
England, 1840. For the two decades following the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen has lived alone and unwed, spending her days visiting friends and relations and quietly, purposefully working to preserve her sister's reputation. Now in her 60s and increasingly frail, Cassandra goes to stay with the Fowles of Kintbury, family of her long-dead fiancé, in search of a trove of Jane's letters. 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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books
"A deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts." —Karen Joy Fowler
"A delightfully astute reimagining of Jane Austen's life that offers a shrewd take on Regency gender roles... Ms. Hornby enlivens the exhumation with inspired touches of social comedy and a cast of appealing eccentrics." — Wall Street Journal

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 7, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781250260581
      • File size: 315167 KB
      • Duration: 10:56:35

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 24, 2020
      The third novel from Hornby (All Together Now) strikes gold in the much-mined terrain of Jane Austen–inspired fiction. After Jane’s death in 1817, her sister Cassandra “Cassy” Austen becomes a fierce protector of her literary reputation and remains so for decades. In March 1840, 67-year-old Cassy discovers that family friends the Fowles are moving out of their home in the village of Kintbury. Cassy, aware of a series of mischievous and moody letters Jane sent their friend Eliza Fowle, fears the letters might tarnish her sister’s legacy if made public, so she travels to Kintbury to find them before they fall into the hands of the Fowle family historian. After sneaking into Eliza’s room and reading the letters, Cassy revisits her own past, from the death of her fiancé to her eventual role as the family’s endlessly useful spinster aunt; Jane’s shifting authorial fortunes; and the sisters’ deep, enduring intimacy. While today’s Jane-ites decry the real Cassandra’s decision to burn much of Austen’s correspondence, Hornby’s Cassy is convincingly sympathetic in her effort to preserve her sister’s reputation, and a focus on female relationships and mutual support adds unexpected tenderness. Echoing Austen’s sardonic wit and crisp prose without falling into pastiche, Hornby succeeds with a vivid homage to the Austens and their world.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In a cultured, melodious voice, narrator Juliet Stevenson becomes Miss Cassandra Austen, older sister to Jane and keeper of her memory. In the course of this fictional biography, Cassandra, at the end of her life, tells the story of her relationship with Jane through letters and reminiscences. The story shifts between the late 1790s and early 1800s and the present of 1840, when Cassandra arrives to help clean out the family parsonage and rescue Jane's letters for posterity. Stevenson portrays the Austen sisters, nieces, and sister-in-law with different tones ranging from soft to stiff, from cultured to bombastic. Fans of Austen will discover echoes of the plots of her famous books, including the heartrending lost chances for love suffered by both Jane and Cassandra. M.B.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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