Secret History
A Melbourne businesswoman reveals she’s related to Jane Austen
Traumatised by the loss of her family home— Chawton House, an Elizabethan manor in England’s Hampshire—when she was 17 years old, a heartbroken Caroline Jane Knight moved to Australia (“as far away as I could go”), where for years she buried deep the details of her fascinating heritage. Chawton House was the ancestral home of Jane Austen—and Knight was the famous author’s fifth great-niece.
“It was heartbreaking to leave Chawton, my ancestors and great-aunt Jane, and I vowed never to talk of Chawton, or Jane Austen, again,” Knight tells WHO, of the dark days when financial woes and the death of her grandfather forced the family to quit their home. Inevitably, though, talk of Austen—who died 200 years ago this year—became impossible for Knight to ignore.
“As Jane’s fame grew to global proportions, it became more and more difficult to avoid reminders,” says Knight, now a successful businesswoman living in Melbourne. “There seemed to be references everywhere I looked. I even discovered a Jane Austen tea room only 20 minutes from my house!”
By 2013, the bicentennial of Austen’s most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, Knight capitulated and embraced the past she had long shunned, detailing her amazing connection to the celebrated novelist in her memoir Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage (Greyfriar Group, $32.95). “Jane and I are from the same family and enjoyed the same village, family traditions, rooms, walks, the family library (3,000 books and family archives compiled over 15 generations) and furniture—we even ate from the same china!” says Knight, who has forged a career as an entrepreneur and philanthropist and founded the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation. Now, three decades on from her unhappy departure from Chawton, Knight is filling her world with all things Austen. “I am keen to share the story of Jane as a businesswoman and her path to global success,” she says. “Jane Austen was a phenomenal role model to grow up with.”