A Rare Jane Austen Letter Is Heading to Auction

One of the English novelist’s poems and a first edition of her book “Emma” are also up for grabs during an upcoming Sotheby’s sale

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

September 10, 2025

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Jane Austen’s closest confidante was her older sister, Cassandra. The two women—who were almost three years apart—wrote numerous letters to each other, sharing their innermost thoughts, feelings and observations.

Now, one of those letters is heading to auction. Collectors will have a rare opportunity to bid on a piece of the Austen sisters’ correspondence during Sotheby’s upcoming “By a Lady” sale, which runs online from October 1 to 15. (The name is a nod to the anonymous pseudonym Austen used on the title page of her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility.)

The auction comes as many museums and cities are celebrating the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth in December 1775. Bath, for instance, is mounting an exhibition that spotlights the author’s negative feelings about the city in southwestern England, while the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City has a new show featuring original manuscripts, financial records and correspondence with family and friends. A new exhibition at the Jane Austen House in England, meanwhile, includes paintings created by Cassandra.

Austen wrote the four-page letter, which is expected to sell for between $300,000 to $400,000, on April 11, 1805. In it, she describes her daily life in Bath, playfully teases her sister and offers news about friends and neighbors.

“Here is a day for you! Did Bath or Ibthrop ever see a finer 8th of April?” she wrote. “It is March and April together, the glare of one and the warmth of the other. We do nothing but walk about; as far as your means will admit I hope you profit by such weather too. I dare say you are already the better for change of place.”

She also commented on the family’s diminished social status, a result of their father’s death three months earlier.

“Seven years and four months ago, we went to the same Ridinghouse to see Miss Lefroy’s performance,” she 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.”

Historians believe Austen wrote roughly 3,000 letters over the course of her short life. However, after her death at age 41 in 1817, her sister burned most of them. Only about 161 letters remain in existence.

It’s not clear why Cassandra made this controversial decision. However, some experts theorize that Austen may have been depressed, and that Cassandra was only trying to protect her sister’s legacy.

“If that’s the case, we can understand why Cassandra would have destroyed some of the evidence of this,” says Kalika Sands, head of books and manuscripts for Sotheby’s in the Americas, to CNN’s Issy Ronald. “Do we want the letters or the emails or the texts that expose the most difficult times in our life left for public consumption?”

Most of the surviving Austen letters are held in museums and institutions, including Jane Austen’s House, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford and the Morgan Library and Museum. However, pieces of correspondence occasionally come to auction. A letter the novelist wrote to her niece sold for $209,300 in 2017, while another note to Cassandra sold for $200,075 in 2019.

The Sotheby’s sale also includes other Austen-related items. One is a first edition of Austen’s novel Emma, which she sent to Irish author Maria Edgeworth. Though it only includes two of the three volumes of Emma, the copy has Edgeworth’s signature on the title page, as well as its original limp wrapper bindings. It’s expected to sell for $250,000 to $350,000.

Collectors will also be able to bid on a handwritten poem titled “Lines on Maria Beckford,” which Austen wrote around the time Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811. She dashed off the playful verses, which are expected to sell for $100,000 to $150,000, after accompanying her neighbor to the doctor.

“This extraordinary group of works reveals Austen in all her facets, from the wit and sly humor in her private poetry to the intimate glimpses of daily life captured in her letters,” says Sands in a statement.

Sarah Kuta | Read More

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.