At a conservative estimate, Jane Austen probably wrote about 3,000 letters during her lifetime, of which only 160 are known and published. The surviving manuscripts are scattered round the globe from Australia to America; most are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, some in the British Library in London and a Few are still in private hands. They are usually written on quarto size paper, folded to form two leaves (i.e. four pages of text), but a few are on octavo sheets or even smaller scraps. As Jane Austen's niece Caroline Austen (1805–80) recalled: ‘Her handwriting remains to bear testimony to its own excellence; and every note and letter of hers, was finished off handsomely – There was an art then in folding and sealing – no adhesive envelopes made all easy – some people’s letters looked always loose and untidy – but her paper was sure to take the right folds, and her sealing wax to drop in the proper place.’

The first of Austen's letters to be published were No. 146 and No. 161(C), some very limited extracts of which were used by her brother Henry in his ‘Biographical Notice of the Author’, prefixed to the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in 1817 (Memoir, pp. 142–3). Thereafter, it was not until the 1860s, when her nephew, the Revd James Edward Austen-Leigh (JEAL) (1798–1874), was contemplating writing a biography of his aunt, that his elder sister Anna, Mrs Lefroy (1793–1872), suggested: ‘Letters may have been preserved, & this is the more probable as Aunt Jane's talent for letter writing was so much valued & thought so delightful amongst her own family circle’ (Memoir, p. 162).

Jane Austen's sister Cassandra (1773–1845) had indeed preserved many of Jane's letters, and JEAL's sister Caroline confirmed: ‘Her letters to Aunt Cassandra (for they were sometimes separated) were, I dare say, open and confidential – My Aunt looked them over and burnt the greater part (as she told me), 2 or 3 years before her own death – She left, or gave some as legacies to the Neices [sic] – but of those that I have seen, several had portions cut out’ (Memoir, p. 174).