As she recalls her own memories of Aunt Jane to help brother James Edward Austen Leigh construct his Memoir of Jane Austen, Caroline Austen questions the possibility of ever representing a ‘life’ that already seems too obscure to recover. ‘I am sure you will do justice to what there is – but I feel that it must be a difficult task to dig up the materials, so carefully have they been buried out of our sight by the past generation.’ She dismisses the more obvious ‘materials’ at hand: ‘There is nothing in those letters which I have seen that would be acceptable to the public – They were very well expressed, and they must have been very interesting to those who received them – but they detailed chiefly home and family events: and she seldom committed herself even to an opinion – so that to strangers they could be no transcript of her mind – they would not feel that they knew her any the better for having read them –.’