Autograph letter signed, dated Godmersham, 20-22 June 1808, to Cassandra Austen

Autograph letter signed, dated Godmersham, 20-22 June 1808, to Cassandra Austen

Literature/Letters

My final project text is a letter written by Jane Austen. Officially titled “Autograph letter signed, dated Godmersham, 20-22 June 1808, to Cassandra Austen”, this letter can be found at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Purchased by J.P. Morgan from a New York dealer in 1920, this letter is part of a $3000 collection of 41 letters and two prints.
This letter is personally significant to me because of the context in which I discovered Jane Austen’s writing. On a whim, during my freshman spring here, I decided to take an English class at Harvard that centered around Jane Austen and fandoms. This class ended up being my favorite class of the semester, and it inspired me to study English in a more formal capacity and take more classes in pursuit of an English secondary, in addition to making Jane Austen my new favorite author.
One day, this class visited the Houghton, and we saw replicas of Jane Austen’s original letters. Something that I immediately noticed was how every single inch of the paper was used in her letters. The techniques used—from the cross-writing to the style of folding—made it such that a singular sheet of paper could be used as the envelope itself. These techniques, although no longer used in present-day, are interesting to analyze simply because they can provide the reader some context as to the availability of paper and the importance of space in writing at the time. I chose this specific letter from the Morgan Library and Museum because, this letter is an original cross-written Austen, whereas the letters at the Houghton are either authentic or cross-written but not both. In the future, this text may continue to be incredibly important, or it may fall out of relevance. Ultimately, this will depend on both how relevant of an author Jane Austen continues to be and on how many people know of the existence of this text.

Jane Austen

Photo = property of the Morgan Library and Museum

1808

Digital (original in print at museum), roughly legal size (8.5x14")

English