Memoir of Jane Austen

THE MEMOIR of my AUNT JANE AUSTEN has been received with more favour than I had ventured to expect. The notices taken of it in the periodical press as well as letters addressed to me by many with whom I am not personally acquainted show that an unabated interest is still taken in every particular that can be told about her. I am thus encouraged not only to offer a Second Edition of the Memoir but also to enlarge it with some additional matter which I might have scrupled to intrude on the public if they had not thus seemed to call for it. In the present Edition the narrative is somewhat enlarged and a few more letters are added; with a short specimen of her childish stories. The cancelled chapter of Persuasion is given in compliance with wishes both publicly and privately expressed. A fragment of a story entitled The Watsons is printed; and extracts are given from a novel which she had begun a few months before her death; but the chief addition is a short tale never before published called Lady Susan. {0a} I regret that the little which I have been able to add could not appear in my First Edition; as much of it was either unknown to me or not at my command when I first published; and I hope that I may claim some indulgent allowance for the difficulty of recovering little facts and feelings which had been merged half a century deep in oblivion.James Edward Austen-Leigh