Miss Austen

Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all? In 1840, twenty-three years after Jane's death, Cassandra Austen returns to Kintbury, the home of her family's friends, the Fowles. She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters holding secrets she can never allow to be revealed. As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Jane's history and her own. She faces a stark choice: should she act to protect Jane's reputation, or leave the letters unguarded for posterity?

Godmersham Park

Early evening, 1804: Anne Sharpe arrives at Godmersham Park in Kent. Alone and in desperate need of an independent income, she is to become a governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen. Her new role in this large household, where she is neither a servant nor a family member, is awkward, and Anne is keenly aware that one wrong move may lead to her instant dismissal. Then dashing Henry Austen and his younger sister Jane come to stay, both taking an immediate interest in the clever governess. Anne quickly becomes drawn into the above-stairs life of the Austen family, and soon, despite her best efforts, she finds herself falling in love. But has her survival at Godmersham Park just become a good deal more precarious?