The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen

June 3, 2013
Ashford (Strange Blood) uses the ambiguity surrounding the death of Jane Austen at 41 to craft an intriguing mystery. There’s some factual basis for the suggestion that Austen was murdered. A 1949 test on a lock of her hair donated to the Jane Austen museum in Chawton showed “levels of arsenic far exceeding that observed in the body’s natural state,” according to an author’s note. Ashford presents the events leading up to Austen’s death in 1817 through the eyes of Anne Sharp, the family governess, who desires more than a platonic relationship with the woman she adores. Sharp’s insightful observations into the family’s dynamics and secrets places her own position in jeopardy, even as she’s able to detect where Austen has put them to use in Mansfield Park and other novels. This solid historical puzzle will appeal even to readers with only passing familiarity with Austen’s works.

July 15, 2013
Did dangerous family secrets lead to the murder of Jane Austen? Reduced circumstances forced Anne Sharp to become a governess to Fanny, the oldest daughter of one of Jane Austen's brothers, Edward Austen and his wife, Elizabeth, of Godmersham. Here she met the visiting Jane, who became her dearest friend and confidante. Indeed, she was in love with Jane, who remained unaware of her feelings. Twenty-six years after Jane's death, Anne decides to write a memoir revealing the secrets that she believes led a family member to poison Jane with arsenic. Was it Henry, Jane's dearest brother? A married but childless man of great charm who often came to Godmersham, Henry delighted in playing with his brother's children. Shockingly, both Jane and Anne came to suspect that Henry had been having a long-standing affair with Elizabeth, some of whose children may be his. When Anne unwisely spoke to Henry, he promptly discharged her, using her poor eyesight as an excuse, and during the years preceding Jane's death, Anne saw her only sporadically. She was fortunate to find work as a companion to a wealthy woman who let her visit Jane, her mother and her sister Cassandra, whose straitened circumstances forced them to move often over the years until the sudden death of Elizabeth, when the wealthy Edward finally provided them with a home at Chawton. Over the years, Anne suspected Henry of having an affair with Mary, another of Jane's sisters-in-law, who boasted little beauty and an uncertain temper. When a strand of Jane's hair tests positive for arsenic, she is ready to set down her account of what may be a string of unproven murders. Ashford (Strange Blood, 2007, etc.) cleverly weaves historical facts into a whodunit written in Austen's style. Janeites may be enthralled or appalled, but they'll agree that this literate page-turner is thought-provoking.

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July 1, 2013

Jane Austen is here not in her fictional detective guise but as the eventual decedent; it makes for a pleasant change. Based on a postmortem analysis of a lock of the author's hair, which revealed levels of arsenic 15 times greater than normal, while those around her lived healthy and long lives, the question becomes: Who done her in? The sleuth in this instance is Anne Sharp, based on a real historical figure (and, yes, reader, she lives up to her surname), a onetime nanny in the extensive Austen entourage, who, after her unwarranted dismissal, keeps in touch with and develops a crush on Jane. Mystery author Ashford (The Rubber Woman; The Killer Inside) uses her obvious and easy familiarity with the comings and goings of the extended Austen clan to present a reasonable, compulsively readable case against the supposed murderer, even long after the statute of limitations has expired. VERDICT No zombies and none of the twee twaddle that characterizes too many Austen pastiches. Rather, this is a lively Regency romance about murder, serial adulteries, and other pastimes of your typical extended family. In this year marking the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, this addition nicely complements P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley and will fill the gap until Jo Baker's eagerly awaited Longbourn (P&P seen from below stairs) is released this fall.--Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

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