What They Said About Her: Sir Edgerton Brydges

Samuel Egerton Brydges was Mrs Lefroy's brother, and lived at the Deane parsonage when Jane was young, prior to the Lloyd family moving there. Brydges later left the district, and from then on had little contact with Jane Austen, so can be counted on as an objective observer as any about her physical appearance.

"I remember Jane Austen the novelist... she was fair and handsome, slight and elegant, with cheeks a little too full. The last time I think I saw her was at Ramsgate in 1803: Perhaps she was then about twenty-seven years old."


From Bridges' Autobiography, published in 1834, and cited by Jon Spence in Becoming Jane Austen.