Cassandra Austen & Her Drawings: A Visit with Janine Barchas

Cassandra Austen, beloved sister to Jane, was a talented artist in her own right. At age 19, she illustrated Jane's satirical History of England with thirteen delightful ink-and-watercolor portraits. She continued to draw and paint throughout her life, most often copying from popular newspaper and magazine prints of the day. In this episode, Austen scholar Janine Barchas discusses her recent discovery of previously unidentified works by Cassandra and the underappreciated "art of copying." Excitingly, there may still be pieces of Cassandra’s work out there, waiting to be discovered! 

Images of Cassandra's drawings discussed in this episode are included in the transcript on the episode webpage. A video version of this episode (or first videocast!) is also available on JASNA's YouTube channel. 

Professor Janine Barchas holds the Chancellor’s Council Centennial Chair in the Book Arts at the University of Texas at Austin and for the past year has been a visiting fellow first at Clare Hall at Cambridge and then at All Souls College at Oxford. She is the author of several books on Austen, including The Lost Books of Jane Austen, and she was JASNA’s North American Scholar Lecturer at the 2013 Annual General Meeting.

Listen to Episode 15 

Stream the episode on your favorite podcast app. Austen Chat is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, as well as on JASNA's YouTube channel.