What’s in a letter? For a woman living in England in the nineteenth century with limited access to social freedoms and even paper—everything.

Historians have given mixed reviews on the value of Jane Austen’s surviving personal letters. Some brush off their contents as uninteresting details of the domestic sphere while others have recognized their value in giving readers an insight into Austen’s day-to-day life. But what if it is not just the inside of her letters that matters, what if there is something of value in their outward appearance that we have overlooked?  

Some of Austen’s letters, now held at the Morgan Library in New York, demonstrate a peculiar technique used by folks in the nineteenth century—they’re cross written. 

Otherwise referred to as “crossed” or “cross hatched”, crossed letters are written as normal (from left-to-right and top-to-bottom), but once the page is full, the author rotates their paper ninety degrees and continues their letter over what has already been written. The result is disastrously difficult to read, but indicates that letter writers prioritised the volume of details and content in their correspondence over ease of legibility. Women maintained a greater degree of freedom in their correspondence to their friends or family than they did in other aspects of society. Their desire to use all the space available on paper, despite making letters harder to read, reveals the unique agency which women had in letter writing.  

Some scholars have suggested that crossed letters were just a way to save money given the high costs of paper and postage in Britain at the time. How, then, can we be sure that writing long, detailed, and often crossed letters was particularly important to women in the 18th century? The price of postage and paper certainly affected women’s correspondence, and limited budget did influence Austen’s letter writing habits, but not so much that we should dismiss the significance of crossed-letters and women’s use of them. Women would not have relied on tricks like folding paper or using cross writing that came at the expense of time and energy of both writer and reader if they did not feel they had something important to share. The practice of writing crossed letters should be seen not just as an economical technique, but as a testament to how important letter writing was for women. 

The value of correspondence in a woman’s life is enshrined in Austen’s own words. In the letter preserved by the Morgan Library described above, Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra:  

“you are very aimable & very clever to write such long Letters; every page of yours has more lines than this, & every line more words than the average of mine. I am quite ashamed.”  

The irony is clear. Despite having used cross-writing herself, Austen still feels she has not managed to provide sufficient information to her sister in her own letter. Austen’s praise of Cassandra’s letters indicates how desirable it was for women to read about what Austen’s critics have downplayed as merely domestic life or otherwise topics lacking opinion or subject-matter. For women in the nineteenth century, details in letters were of massive importance for maintaining a closeness with loved ones often separated by immense distances given the difficulty and slowness of travel. For Austen long, detailed letters had the potential to bridge the separation between her and her sister. It can be of no doubt that exhaustive information and stories of day-to-day life helped women get through difficult feelings of isolation when they lived so far away from the people they relied upon for their emotional and mental well-being. 

Further proof of letter writing’s critical importance to British women’s lives in the nineteenth century is found within the pages of Austen’s novels. Both Mansfield Park and Emma make significant references to the value of correspondence in young women’s lives. In Mansfield Park, when a young Fanny Price is removed from her home and placed in the care of her aunt and uncle, she becomes endlessly devoted to her cousin after he provides her with ink and paper so that she might correspond with her brother. The means to write a letter completely changes the character’s sense of agency and well-being.  

In Emma, the arrival of a letter from Jane Fairfax is cause for celebration at their aunt’s house, but the visual look of the letter is apologized for since it was cross written and difficult to read. Cross hatched letters were far from the pinnacle of lady-like penmanship, but the style was nevertheless used by women of higher social classes. In order to bear separation and distance, women like Jane Fairfax would have to put as much information as they could into a few pages of paper to simulate closeness with their family. To write in a manner that may have detracted from their accomplishments indicates that women who wrote crossed letters were boldly choosing to stay well informed among family and friends over following etiquette guidelines. 

Austen’s personal correspondence and literary work is a historical testament to the importance of letter writing for women in the nineteenth century. Correspondence was the means of bridging distance with loved ones, which helped women, who were already particularly isolated in nineteenth century society, maintain their psychological well-being. Although they could be difficult to read, crossed letters were still desired by recipients because of how important detailed news and information was to them. Otherwise, women would have never gone through all the trouble of writing and reading letters that were almost impossible to make out.  

Austen’s personal correspondence and stories about letters show us how important detailed letters were for women, as a means of maintaining important relationships and expressing themselves. Crossed letters, although difficult for the historian to read, show us a unique lens into the agency nineteenth century women exerted in their correspondence.  

Biography

Francesca is an aspiring historian of women’s political history primarily within the United States. She is a recent graduate from NYU’s Master’s in History program, as well as a coffee addict and book lover.  

Sources

Austen, Jane. “Autograph letter signed : Godmersham, to Cassandra Austen, 1808 June 20 and 22.” Austen collection of 41 autograph letters signed and two prints : written from various places in England, to her sister Cassandra Austen, [1796] Sept. 18-[1816] Sept. 8. Record ID: 282280. Dept. of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY. 

Austen, Jane. Emma. Edited by James Kinsley and Adela Pinch, Oxford University Press, 2003. 

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Edited by James Kinsley, Oxford University Press, 2003.  

De la Pena, Clara, and Reba Fishman Snyder. “Jane Austen’s Writing: A Technical Perspective.” The Morgan, The Thaw Conservation Center at The Morgan Library & Museum, 6 Nov. 2006. 

Hume, Robert D. “Money in Jane Austen.” The Review of English Studies 64, no. 264 (2013): 289–310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42003625. 

Le Faye, Deidre. “Letter” in Jane Austen in Context, edited by Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.