The handful of poems written by Jane Austen – impromptu, occasional, often arising from games – were the result not so much of the art which produced her novels as of a tradition of family verse-writing inherited from her mother. In 1791 Mrs Austen's cousin Mary Leigh compiled a manuscript volume of family verses composed by herself and various relations in her youth, among them her cousin by marriage, Sir Edward Turner, who, she wrote, was ‘almost singular, in encouraging young Women to read’ at a period earlier in the century when ‘literature in Ladies … was little encouraged, less admired, & therefore was seldom seen’. One of the pieces in the collection was a mock-heroic poem in three cantos, dedicated to Sir Edward: clearly inspired by Pope's The Rape of the Lock, ‘The Adventures of a Pin’ includes various episodes set in the London of fashionable beaux and beauties seen through the satirical eyes of three young authoresses. Mary's father, Theophilus, the Master of Balliol, described his niece Cassandra (the future Mrs George Austen) as ‘already the poet of the family’ at the age of six; and although the remark was presumably intended as a kindly avuncular joke, it turned out to be distinctly prophetic.

No poems written by the young Cassandra Leigh have survived, but the verses she wrote for the entertainment of her family and the boys Mr Austen took into Steventon Rectory to prepare for university reveal a delightful wit and considerable metrical skill. When one of her husband's pupils was absent for an unaccountably long time, she sent him a verse letter tempting him back with satirically couched inducements: