Jane Austen and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again. In November 1798, Lefroy was still on Austen's mind as she wrote to her sister she had tea with one of his relatives, wanted desperately to ask about him, but could not bring herself to raise the subject. After finishing "Lady Susan", Austen began her first full-length novel "Elinor and Marianne". Her sister remembered that it was read to the family
Reception history of Jane Austen "one of the most distinguished modern British novelists". Around the start of the 20th century, Austen novels began to be studied at universities and appear in histories of the English novel. The image of her that dominated the popular imagination was still that first presented in the "Memoir" and made famous by Howells in his series of essays in "Harper's Magazine", that of "dear aunt Jane". Author and critic Leslie Stephen described a mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry"—it was only after the publication of the "Memoir" that readers developed a personal connection with