Esteemed novelist Jane Austen will be commemorated on her 250th birthday this year, with a host of festivities planned across the UK to honour the Pride and Prejudice author’s life and literary contributions. In addition to these celebrations, One is set to broadcast a four-part drama series titled Miss Austen, inspired by Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel of the same name.
The series delves into the mystery surrounding why Cassandra Austen (played by Keeley Hawes) destroyed her sister Jane’s (Patsy Ferran) personal letters following her death. The show is scheduled to air on Sunday, February 2 at 9.05pm, with the entire boxset available from 6am on the same day for those eager to watch it all at once.
Many fans are intrigued about Jane’s final days and the circumstances of her untimely death. The beloved author passed away on July 18, 1817, at the tender age of 41, in her residence at 8 College Street, Winchester, at 4.30am, with her devoted sister Cassandra by her side. She had gone to Winchester for medical treatment.
Her cause of death remains unknown, but theories suggest she may have suffered from Addison’s disease or Hodgkin’s lymphoma, both of which align with her reported health issues. Symptoms of Addison’s disease include skin discolouration, low mood, fatigue, muscle weakness, temperature fluctuations, nausea, and vomiting, while Hodgkin lymphoma can cause fatigue, fevers, itchy skin, and breathlessness.
In a 2021 interview with , Michael D Sanders, Emeritus Consultant at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital, presented a compelling argument that Jane Austen’s untimely demise was due to the chronic autoimmune disease Lupus, rather than Addison’s or Hodgkin’s disease as widely speculated. Sanders meticulously re-examined Austen’s surviving letters, including one where she described her skin transforming into “black and white and every wrong colour”.
Jane Austen died with sister Cassandra by her side (Image: BBC)
[INTERVIEW] [EXPLAINER]
Lupus is characterised by the immune system mistakenly attacking the body’s own tissues, leading to inflammation. The NHS lists symptoms of Lupus as including skin rashes, fatigue, joint pain, high temperature, depression, and headaches, among others.
Sanders dismissed the theory proposed by British physician Zachary Cope in 1964 that Austen suffered from Addison’s disease, citing her “multicoloured” and “transient” facial lesions were not typical of the condition. Furthermore, Austen experienced a degree of recovery from her illness, which would not have been possible with the progressive nature of Addison’s.
In contrast, Sanders noted Austen exhibited two primary symptoms of Lupus: facial pigmentation and periods of recovery. He also highlighted that Lupus continues to disproportionately affect women today.
Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra burned most of her letters (Image: BBC)
Conversely, crime writer Lindsay Ashford proposed an alternative theory in 2011, suggesting Austen may have succumbed to arsenic poisoning, which can also cause skin discolouration. Ashford has intriguingly linked the symptoms detailed in Jane Austen’s letters to those of arsenic poisoning, describing it as an “amazing correlation”, according to a report by .
The author has posited that Austen may have been unwittingly medicated with arsenic-laced treatments.
Jane Austen’s death remains a mystery (Image: BBC)
Delving into this hypothesis in her 2011 book The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen, Ashford even hinted at the possibility of deliberate foul play, suggesting “there could have been a motive for murder”. In a fascinating twist, the British Library in 2017 embarked on a quest to determine if accidental arsenic poisoning could have caused Austen to develop cataracts, examining her glasses for evidence, yet remained wary of endorsing any definitive conclusions about her demise.
Contrastingly, Professor Janet Todd, who helmed the Cambridge edition of Jane Austen, has dismissed the notion of murder as implausible and expressed scepticism over the idea of Austen being “poisoned intentionally”. While acknowledging the peculiarity of Austen’s early death, Todd emphasized the mystery surrounding the cause, noting that certainty would elude us without exhuming Austen’s remains.
She remarked that exhuming Austen from her burial site in Winchester Cathedral for contemporary forensic scrutiny “would not be appreciated”.
Miss Austen airs on One on Sunday, February 2 at 9.05pm and will be available as a boxset on iPlayer from 6am