Jan Merriman: Jane Austen's Remarkable Aunt, Philadelphia Hancock

Next date: Friday, 20 June 2025 | 06:00 PM to 08:00 PM

Jane Austen’s aunt Philadelphia Hancock brought the world to the impressionable young Jane’s Hampshire home and echoed in her novels thereafter.

Who was Philadelphia Hancock and why was she significant in Jane Austen’s life and work?

'Jane Austen’s Remarkable Aunt', based on extensive original research, follows the story of Philadelphia’s life from orphaned child in provincial Kent to a millinery apprenticeship in notorious Covent Garden, and then out to India for an arranged marriage to an East India Company surgeon.

Jan Merriman is a Jane Austen expert and joins us to celebrate 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth. Jan will speak for around an hour, then the Friends of Kiama Library invites you to join them for a glass of wine and some finger food.

$25 Friends members / $30 Guests (includes drinks and finger food). Everyone welcome.

Books available for purchase and signing.

Tickets are available online, at the library, or call 02 4233 1133.

Jane Austen's Remarkable Aunt, Philadelphia Hancock

Jane Austen's Remarkable Aunt, Philadelphia Hancock by Jan Merriman.jpg The orphaned Philadelphia Austen was forced to seek for herself those objects of eighteenth-century womanhood: social esteem and financial independence. Her story is circumscribed by the limitations of women’s lives of that time and opens up a wider exploration of those times through a detailed examination of one particular woman: Jane Austen’s ‘aunt Phila’.

The story of her aunt had impressed the young Jane Austen when she created a character, Cecilia Wynne, in her short fiction, Catharine or the Bower, written when she was sixteen. Cecilia’s experience as an orphaned ‘girl of genius and feeling’ being ‘sent in quest of a husband to Bengal’, mirrored that of her recently deceased aunt. Such a connection between author and aunt sparked an interest in an otherwise neglected member of the Austen clan.

How did this aunt who had provided inspiration for the young Jane manage to make her way in the world? How did the course of her life reflect the lives of other women of her times? What worlds did she move in? What people did she meet? Little was known about Philadelphia, yet her daughter Eliza, was said to be a central figure in Jane Austen’s life.

The conventional trajectory Philadelphia’s was changed when, after completing a millinery apprenticeship in London, she took the chance of a journey to India and an arranged marriage. There she became part of the colourful world of the Honourable East India Company and encountered many of its most notable people. Her life was transformed.

Jan Merriman

Jan Merriman is a retired teacher and graduate of The University of Sydney and Macquarie University, majoring in English Literature and Linguistics. Long devoted to Jane Austen, she has pursued her interest through research into many aspects of Jane Austen’s work, presented papers to Jane Austen Groups and conferences and published journal articles in Australia over the past ten years.

The biography of Jane Austen’s aunt Philadelphia Hancock is the product of seven years of research and a fascination with the untold stories of eighteenth-century women. This is her first book for Pen & Sword.