Famous novelist Jane Austen letter to elder sister is all set to be sold at auction next month.
According to CNN, sisterhood defined Austen’s own life, as underlined by a long, chatty letter she wrote to her elder sister, Cassandra, which is expected to fetch up to $400,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in October.
Nearly three years apart in age, the two sisters were extraordinarily close; so close that their mother once said, “if Cassandra’s head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too.”
As Kalika Sands, Sotheby’s Head of Books and Manuscripts New York, notes, they had an “incredibly close emotional bond” as well as a “very strong intellectual bond.”
This relationship is evident in the letters they wrote to each other. In this one, Austen rattles through an account of her days in Bath, gossips about their neighbors and relatives, shares news about their friends, pokes fun at Cassandra’s ill health, and laments the family’s diminished social status.
“Seven years and four months ago, we went to the same riding house to see Miss Lefroy’s performance,” Austen wrote. “What a different set we are now moving in, but seven years, I suppose, are enough to change every pore of one’s skin and every feeling of one’s mind.”
Neither of the Austen sisters ever married and they remained each other’s closest confidante until Jane’s death at age 41. “I had not a thought concealed from her,” Cassandra wrote two days after her sister’s death.
Other Austen memorabilia will also feature at the auction held online between October 1 and October 15, taking the combined estimated value of the lots up to $1.3 million.