When Jane Austen died in 1817, little was known about her illness except that she suffered from a "bilious attack" that turned her looks "black and white and every wrong color." The cause of her death remained a mystery until 1964, when an analysis of Austen's symptoms yielded retrospective diagnoses of Addison's disease or Hodgkin's lymphoma. But the British mystery writer and journalist Lindsay Ashford details an alternate hypothesis in The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen, an intriguing novel that attributes Austen's demise to arsenic poisoning.
Ashford uses Anne Sharp, a governess working for Jane's brother Edward, as a witness to various conspiracies surrounding their brother Henry, such as frequent visits to sister-in-law Elizabeth that coincide with her child-bearing confinements. Jane and Anne first meet in 1805 and develop a friendship over a mutual love of reading and care for Jane's nieces. Yet, as the years progress, Anne's conspiratorial imagination and infatuation with Jane threaten to ruin her both professionally and personally.
The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen is a fantastical period piece true to the language and mannerisms of its inspiration, but one that takes free license with pivotal moments in Austen family history. While Ashford delivers a suspenseful and highly entertaining work of fiction, she also incurs the anger of diehard Janeites, whose reverence for the image of piety and purity so carefully sculpted by the Austen family post-mortem conflicts with the scenes Ashford paints so vividly. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant