Catalogue description Letters from Fanny C Knight (née Austen, later Knatchbull) to Miss Knatchbull

This series of letters is remarkable in the description it provides of the life of a gentlewoman in the last century. The first eleven letters are descriptive of Fanny's responsibilities as the eldest daughter with a large family to care for after the death of her mother in 1808. U951/C109/6 is composed of letters from Elizabeth Knight and Fanny and also from Susanna Sackvee a servant to Miss C; and U951/C109/9 contains an oblique reference to the death of Jane Austen. In the main these letters concern the health of the family and their travels and education and the social round at Godmersham.

U951/C109/12-20, cover the period 1820-1838. They describe the life of Fanny as a young wife, beginning with her engagement to Sir Edward Knatchbull (U951/C109/12) and ending with the death of her step-daughter Mary Dorothea who had contracted a run-away marriage with Edward Knight, brother of Fanny. The emphasis is again on children and their upbringing and many illnesses. Sir Edward's political life is hardly referred to.

U951/C109/21-35 take up the story after a gap of six years and include references to the death of her eldest daughter Fanny Elizabeth in 1846 and the retirement of Sir Edward (U951/C109/22). The interest however centres in the Irish famine and in the exertions of her sister Louisa and brother in law Lord George Hill (m. Cassandra Jane Knight who d. 1842) to deal with that problem and also his endeavours to build a protestant church at Gweedore in Donegal and his publication of 'Facts from Gweedore' as a means of raising funds for this purpose. U951/C109/34 refers to the disastrous explosion of a gunpowder works at Faversham and to the marriage (in Denmark because marriage to a deceased wife's sister's wife was legal there) of Lord George to Louisa. U951/C109/35 is a fragment of one of Louisa's letters regarding activities at Gweedore.

U951/C109/36-55 continue from 1847 to 1857 and are of a more sombre character. While the upbringing of her family is still central these letters refer in detail to Sir Edward's illness and death (U951/C109/39-43), the death of Alicia, dau; and the death of her father Edward Knight at the end of 1852. (U951/C109/53). Increasingly sickness and death and the contemplation of God's providence find a dominating place in these letters. The last from F F Giraud of Faversham tells that his aunt, Miss Chapman, is at the point of death itself.