Catherine Hubback

Who was Catherine Hubback?

Catherine Anne Hubback was an English novelist, and the eighth child and fourth daughter of Sir Francis Austen, and niece of Jane Austen.

She began writing fiction to support herself and her three sons after her husband John Hubback was institutionalized with a breakdown. She had copies of some of her aunt's unfinished works and, in 1850, remembering Austen's proposed plot, she wrote The Younger Sister, a completion of Jane Austen's The Watsons. In the next thirteen years, she completed nine more novels.

She emigrated to California, USA in 1870. In the autumn of 1876 she removed to Gainesville, Prince William Co, VA, where she died in 1877. Her novels, which enjoyed some popularity in their time, are no longer well-known. Her most important contribution is to literary history where she, and later family, perpetuated Austen family history.