Season 55 - Miss Austen (2025)
If there's one thing Janeites can agree on since time immemorial, or since fans of Jane Austen agreed on a moniker, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Jane's life is why her sister Cassandra burned practically all of Jane's letters. Of all the letters Jane wrote in her lifetime only 160 remain. What was in those letters that Cassandra deemed necessary to expunge? I mean, one of the surviving letters is Jane getting blind drunk and puking, so, why'd Cassandra do it!?! In fact, most Janeites, if given a chance to change one aspect of the history surrounding Jane, would probably choose for the phoenix-like return of the letters, while I personally would have liked Jane to have lived long enough to finish Sanditon so that she'd have written seven novels instead of six. At least she wrote more books than Jack the Ripper had victims. Why am I bringing up Jack the Ripper while discussing Jane Austen's letters? Because it is another of life's mysteries that will forever remain unsolved. Unless the premise to Anthony Horowitz's show Crime Traveller becomes a reality that is. Miss Austen is a bittersweet story of family connections and sisterly love that involves Cassandra Austen going to attend the deathbed of family friend Reverend Fowle, who, if fate had been kinder, would have been Cassandra's brother-in-law. Whilst helping the Reverend's daughter Isabella dismantle the household on the Reverend's death Cassandra hopes to find her sister Jane's letters to Isabella's mother Eliza who was Jane's dearest friend. But it is not an easy task with Eliza's sister Mary, who is also Cassandra's sister-in-law, on the hunt for the letters. What follows is a dreamlike rumination of the past and present and what you are willing to sacrifice for love and will that sacrifice be worth it in your dying days. Here we see Cassandra as a driving force. She was Jane's dearest friend and confidant but she also acted as a midwife to Jane's books. This posits that she turned away from a traditional life because she knew she had a greater purpose. The love of Cassandra's life wasn't Tom Fowle, it was Jane. Cassandra was the shepherd and the champion of Jane. In a scene where she starts to place Jane's books on their bookshelf, it isn't just Jane's legacy, it's their legacy. And when Jane dies it's up to Cassandra to protect that legacy. She was Jane's secret keeper and Jane wanted no one to see the darker side of her. The bleak thoughts and the moments of despair. She wanted to be remembered for her work. Work she published anonymously while alive, though don't read too much into that because it was the convention more than anything else. And historically it must be remembered that Frances Burney was viewed as an author equal to Jane but when her letters were published they overshadowed her works. Perhaps Cassandra didn't want this for her beloved sister. Let the work Jane wanted to share with the world be that by which she is known. And only that. And by the end of Miss Austen after crying your way through Jane's death you are so emotionally raw you will believe anything. Of course Cassandra had to do this. It's what Jane would have wanted. But then, later, once you've recovered, you realize that we're not talking about a few letters taken from a vicarage, we're talking about the destruction of approximately three thousand letters. The scale isn't taken into consideration here. So while emotionally I fully want to believe Gill Hornby's suppositions, the logical part of my brain says that this wholesale destruction must mean something more. Something we will never know.
I am a brochure hoarder. Anywhere I go I grab one. The problem is what to do with them later? What's their purpose? They just take up space and yet you don't want to part with them. Unless they have a place in a photo album or have a secondary function they are a waste of space and right now I'm all about downsizing. Therefore a brochure redesign is like a dream project for me. Because I can take it to the next level, making it functional and collectible. Though this assignment for school had two requirements, I had to use all the existing text in a current brochure while also using an interesting and unique fold. So I worked backwards. Whose brochure would I love to redesign and the answer quickly came to me, obviously The Jane Austen Centre in Bath. The next question was, what kind of fold? Well, for anyone like me who spends way too much time watching Jane Austen adaptations they covet getting a letter like Austen's characters, getting to crack the seal and unfold the paper. Therefore the fold became obvious, I would use a typical Regency letter fold. 
What's unique about this fold is that it's based on one of Jane's own letters, which I scanned in and used as a background, drastically toned down to not interfere with the legibility of any information I needed to convey. While any brochure is functional to an extent I love that this made it a keepsake, like getting a letter from Austen herself. As for that red seal? No, it's not wax, but a faux wax seal sticker which can be purchased in bulk and used to add
an air of authenticity. Ironically the seal in the picture is from another fandom I'm a part of. Yes, it's a seal for Hogwarts. Originally I wanted to take the wax seal further and create one in the centre's colors, but then I found out that during Jane Austen's time you could
use only red or black wax, so it stayed red. Yes, I'm a stickler for certain things, also, the more you know, right?
The information in the brochure could basically be broken down into five
categories: Jane Austen, Touring the Jane Austen Centre, the Gift Shop, the Tea Room, and Jane Austen's Bath. Using the centre's own logo as a starting point, I created
four more icons to go with the subsections, a teacup, a reticule, a teapot, and an umbrella. These categories then easily divided the
content into the sections that could correspond to the various
panels the folds created. When you first open the brochure you get this nice
little text area with all the information you could need with the headings set in a font based on Austen's own handwriting. In the smaller sections at the top I placed the valuable information of location, hours, and admission. But for me it was all about the interior of the brochure where I placed the map, where form and function combined in happy symmetry. 
The entire interior was turned over
to a map I drew in Photoshop with my Wacom. Yes. I drew a map of Bath with all the locations important to Jane Austen's life clearly marked. Why would I draw a map other than being totally OCD and always having a need to take a project to the next level? Because, to me, I find maps the most useful thing a brochure can give you. Therefore I figured I HAD to have a map. And while I haven't been to Bath I feel like I know it now. I drew out all the streets, and looked up all the names, I was not just an armchair traveler but an armchair detective, following Jane's life through the city she loathed. I hope one day to go to Bath, and before you ask, yes, I'm taking my own map. Though I also kind of want to see what would happen if I was left without a map. After this project could I find my way without any help? I have a feeling I could... 
