Emma Claire Sweeney

We do know to a certain extent she must have prized her privacy, given that she did write anonymously.

We also know, I think, that she was quite a shrewd manager of her literary affairs.

So we know that she did some negotiations herself with the publisher, John Murray, which seems quite extraordinary to me, actually, that she did.

took that upon herself when her brother, who had previously managed her affairs, I think was too ill to make the meeting.

She talks about being fond of pewter as well as praise, so she did want to earn a decent living from her writing.

We know that she sent one of her precious presentation copies of Emma to the wildly successful author Mariah Edgeworth, presumably in the hope that Mariah might praise her writing and that that might lead to

greater kind of status and publicity.

She didn't approve of The Prince Regent, who John mentioned earlier, and yet she did dedicate the novel to him.

I'm not sure how much choice she really had in the matter, but she appears to have used the situation to her advantage and used it to get some leverage with her publisher, with John Murray.

So I guess this is making me think that she might have been quite good at it.

We know she has a good line in very quotable, pithy, funny lines.

I think it could have been quite dangerous for her too.

We know also that she could be very sharp tongued.

She could be gossipy.

Cassandra could not have so easily destroyed the record when it came to social media.

Screenshots last forever.

I wonder if novelists almost always draw something from their life.

It's just very difficult to tell exactly.

which aspects have been drawn from the novelist's own experience.

I've written a novel very closely inspired by my sister, but then the idea that it is my sister, that's not actually quite true.