author
Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
1872–1961
Best known as one of Jane Austen’s family biographers, he helped preserve and interpret the novelist’s life for later generations. He was also a printer and scholar whose work connected literary history with the world of publishing.
1 Audiobook
Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record
by William Austen-Leigh, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
About the author
Born on May 17, 1872, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh was a member of the extended Austen family and a great-grandson of James Austen, Jane Austen’s eldest brother. He was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, where he took a first in the Classical Tripos in 1894.
Alongside his family connection, he built a career in printing and scholarship. Sources describe him as a printer and historian, and he later served as president of the British Federation of Master Printers in 1922–1923. He is especially remembered for collaborating with his uncle William Austen-Leigh on Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters – A Family Record (1913), a major early family biography of Jane Austen.
He also edited Austen Papers, adding to the preservation of documents related to the Austen family. Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh died in 1961, leaving a lasting mark on Jane Austen studies through the family materials he helped bring into print.