It is the relationships they maintained with their families and friends, regardless of distance – mainly through letter writing – that forms one of the many connections between Lucy Maud and her predecessor, Jane Austen. Readers of their letters and journals can appreciate how the act of keeping up correspondence with loved ones helped their own well being and revealed quite a lot about their own writing.
Jane Austen's main pen pal was her older sister Cassandra, who, according to the book "Jane Austen's World", was the most important person in her life. Jane looked up to her sibling and respected the differences in their personalities, especially Cassandra's ability to maintain composure and be sound in judgement, while Jane tended to be more spirited in outward emotion. When Jane was a young girl and begged to go to school with Cassandra, her mother is said to have remarked, "If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”
Jane came from a family of skilled letter-writers and throughout her short life, she wrote a few thousand of her own. Most of the existing letters were written to her sister, Cassandra. In that time period - the end of the 18th century - letters were written on a large piece of paper and folded by four, with a space left for the address. The recipient would always pay for the letter, because there was no stamp system, and the cost depended on the number of sheets in the letter and the distance the postman had to travel. Sometimes the two women had so much to say to each other that they made a checkerwork of their letters. Maggie Lane, author of "Jane Austen's World," writes, "If there was a great deal to say a second set of lines would be written at right angles across the first, making the 'checkerwork' that Miss Bates refers to in Emma.”
Since Jane's extensive family was scattered over the country, whenever anyone paid visits they would stay for extended periods of time. When one of the sisters was away, they would write to each other every day. Once they mailed one letter, they’d begin writing another one – always starting with the latest news and then addressing their sister’s news. The letters were full of domestic and sometimes seemingly trivial information to the outside eye, but always contained acute observations of the people and places around them. Jane's letters were said to be “minor work(s) of art” themselves, in addition to her novels. Cassandra kept Jane’s letters, but censored them quite a bit (taking out embarrassing health topics or personal remarks about family members). But even with these parts removed, readers of Jane's correspondence can see a truly original mind at work and they can identify just as much with her letters as with her novels.
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Sources: "Jane Austen's World", "My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Mongtgomery"
