James, Jane Austen’s eldest brother, is a widower with a young daughter, Anna. His mother welcomes his engagement to Mary Lloyd, already a friend of the family. The extracts look forward to their marriage in January 1797. The hoped-for move to Shropshire concerns Jane’s sister Cassandra and her fiancé, Thomas Fowle; it had not yet happened.

Cassandra Austen (née Leigh) to Mary Lloyd

Date unresolved

most heartfelt satisfaction at the prospect.

Had the selection been mine, you, my dear Mary, are the person I should have chosen for James's wife, Anna's mother and my daughter, being as certain as I can be of anything in this uncertain world, that you will greatly increase and promote the happiness of each of the three. . . . I look forward to you as a real comfort to me in my old age when Cassandra is gone into Shropshire, and Jane—the Lord knows where. Tell Martha she too shall be my daughter, she does me honour in the request.

Two quoted portions, not an intact opening: the first phrase is introduced by the biographers’ own sentence. Life and Letters, p. 73 places the letter after the engagement late in 1796 and before the wedding early in 1797, without an exact dateline. Anna is James’s daughter by his first wife; Martha is Mary Lloyd’s sister. The source’s footnote identifies Shropshire as Thomas Fowle’s living, where Cassandra expected to go after marriage.

Extract from Life and Letters (1913), p. 73.