Jane Austen is the gift that keeps on giving; we never cease to tire of Austen adaptations, be it spinoffs such as Clueless (1995) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) or faithful remakes like Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Pride and Prejudice (2005). Bestselling author Gill Hornby has taken yet another fresh approach to feed our appetite for Jane—by writing about her real-life sister. Discover how Cassandra Austen’s story came to haunt the author, why she wanted this sister to step out of Jane’s shadow, and learn about other famous novelists in Hornby’s immediate family.
What led you to write Miss Austen? And why tell the story through Cassandra?
I knew Jane Austen’s novels backwards and forwards since I was at school and loved them very much. However, it was 32 years ago when we moved into our current home [the Old Vicarage in Kintbury] that I started to really take interest. We were told the house had an Austen connection—not through Jane so much as through Cassandra, who was engaged to the son of the vicar who lived here. Cassandra was visiting when her fiancé Tom left to go to the other side of the world. She came down before dawn, wrapped in a shawl to say goodbye as he got onto the coach and never saw him again. …Before then, I don’t think I even knew Jane Austen had a sister. But there she was, and she began slightly to haunt me.
You’ve said your story is a sort of propaganda novel. How so?
A long while back and purely by chance, I was asked to write a biography of Jane Austen for younger readers. And in doing my research, I discovered that all Austen biographers hate Cassandra because she’d burned so many of Jane’s letters. I was rather astonished that Cassandra was treated as such a baddie. And I read the memoirs of the nieces and nephews who all talked about Jane the genius and the marvel and all the rest of it and gave Cassandra rather short shrift.
But when I went to Jane’s [surviving] letters, I got a completely different take, because Jane—who really didn’t suffer many people—really thought Cassandra was wonderful. She wouldn’t trim a bonnet without asking her sister’s opinion. They laughed and were so close and, towards the end of Jane’s life, she was entirely emotionally dependent on Cassandra. I was jolly cross on Cassandra’s behalf that she was getting this bad rap when she was so important. I really wanted to write this as a propaganda novel to make the case that Cassandra was everything to Jane and that without Cassandra, there would’ve been no Jane Austen novels.
Did reading Jane’s surviving letters help you develop the voice for the fictionalized versions that are so critical to your story’s flashbacks?
Oh, completely. Not just for the imagined letters in the book, but for Jane and her dialogue, too. I started to write a novel about Cassandra, but of course the sisters were so joined at the hip, I had to have Jane in it. And that was intimidating, to say the least! There are an awful lot of people on this planet who adore Jane Austen and think they’ve got her completely right in their minds. My having to invent her and make her walk and talk and think really was terrifying—the big hurdle in writing the novel.
I went back to [an existing] letter that Jane wrote to Cassandra the first time they’d ever been apart. She wrote something like, “I think I know how it goes, this letter writing business. You write as if the other person is in the armchair opposite you, and you are speaking to them.” And I thought, well, I’ll take your word for it! So, I was able to develop her voice for the letters and dialogue. Then once I decided my fictionalized letters would be those that Cassandra would’ve destroyed from various traumatic times in their lives together, I have to say, it was quite easy to fake them. It was just an act of ventriloquism, really.
Can you describe what it’s like seeing your novel brought to life for TV audiences?
Well, it’s an absolute dream come true; it’s been wonderful. It’s quite a complicated novel, but I think they simplify it brilliantly. I just found it incredibly moving, hanging out on set like a nerd, observing it all—especially watching Patsy [Ferran]; it’s as if Jane has been brought back to life. I mean, she really captures that enormous intelligence, but also the awkwardness that Jane had. Her genius set her apart from other people in her class and milieu, and Patsy just gets that perfectly.
And having Keeley Hawes play Cassandra, I mean, she is the most magnificent actress. Of course, she’s much, much younger than Cassandra is in my book, but that was fine. What’s important is the kind of quietness of her performance, because they were ruled by excellent manners in that generation. In the scenes with her loathed sister-in-law Mary, you really sense the enmity between them without anybody having a cross word. It’s all done in an eyebrow or a kind of face twitch or something. Yeah, Keeley is marvelous—the warmth of her performance. She’s just this perfect heroine.
You’ve talked about the close relationship you have with your brother, novelist Nick Hornby. Did that bond in any way inform your depiction of Jane and Cassy’s attachment?
Perhaps it did, yes. But perhaps I was more informed by my own daughters, because I’ve got two boys and two girls, and the girls are very, very close. I didn’t have a sister growing up. …I think my girls’ intimacy was very instructive to me. But also, the historic evidence Cassandra and Jane left behind of their own relationship. All relationships are particular to the participants, and theirs was very intense.
You’ve said you and your husband, best-selling author Robert Harris, are each other’s first reader. So far, he’s journeyed with you through three books about extended Austen family members. Do you see him as an Austen hero?
Well, to be honest, all the Austen heroes are quite deficient in various ways. The one I most admire, I suppose, is Knightley, but there’s a slight creepy element there in that he’s known Emma literally since she was in the cradle. And so that’s kind of slightly pervy. Robert and I met at the right age, in appropriate circumstances and a spirit of equality. But I have to say, he has all of Knightley’s excellent values—without the perviness.
