Dearest Cousin Jane

Drawing on historical fact, Jill Pitkeathley paints a luminous portrait of Jane Austen's free-spirited and seductive cousin, Countess Eliza de Feuillide-from her flirtatious younger years to her great influence on one of the world's favorite authors. Speculated to have been born from a love affair between her mother and the great Warren Hastings, founder of the East India Company and the British Raj, Eliza was a precocious young woman and well-known flirt. Educated in England and France, she went on to marry a French count, Jean de Feuillide, and bear one son with him, who died before reaching adulthood. She later suffered the loss of her husband and her French fortune, when Madame la Guillotine claimed him during the early days of the French Revolution.

Yet Eliza was close to the Austen family throughout her days, and flirted with both of Jane's brothers profusely, encouraging both men to propose to her upon the death of her husband. She eventually accepted Jane's favorite brother Henry, once he abandoned his career as a minister to join the military at the threat of Napoleon's invasion. Eliza brought glamour and excitement on her visits to the Austen's country parsonage in England, and was a huge influence on the young Jane, despite disapproval from Jane's mother of such wicked company for her daughter.

ENCHANTING ELIZA develops this compelling relationship between Jane and Eliza and reveals the extent to which Eliza was the basis for some of Jane's more scandalous characters-even a model for Jane's views on love and marriage. In alternating chapters, we learn about Eliza's life through the voices of Jane, Jane's sister Cassandra, and other family members, including Jane's love-sick brothers. Pitkeathley aptly places these well-known literary personalities against the backdrop of the historical events of the time, which were often neglected in Jane's own writings, yet clearly framed Jane's work. As Pitkeathley reveals, Countess Eliza was a major influence on one of the world's best loved novelists-and it is indeed high time we tell her story.