Lifespan: 1818-1877
Nationality: English
Types of Work: novels
Other Names: Mrs. Hubback
Bio:
Catherine Anne Austen Hubback was born in 1818 to Sir Francis Austen, brother of famous novelist, Jane Austen. Catherine never met her famous Aunt Jane, who died a year before her birth.
Catherine began writing in order to support herself and her three sons after her husband, barrister John Hubback, suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental institution.
Catherine had retained copies of some of her aunt's unfinished novels, and, in 1850, she finished Austen's The Watsons, publishing under the title, The Younger Sister. She published nine more novels over the subsequent thirteen years. Her novels enjoyed a moderate popularity in her time, but has been virtually forgotten now. Her most important literary contribution is her perpetuation of Austen family history.
In 1870, she emigrated to California, then moved to Gainesville, Virginia in 1876. She died there a year later on 25 February 1877.
Her granddaughter, Edith Hubback Brown wrote sequels of her famous relative's novels, publishing her own continuation of The Watsons in 1928 (strangely, without being aware her mother had done so), and Margaret Dashwood; or Interference in 1929, as well as Susan Price; or, Resolution in 1930.
Novels:
The Younger Sister (1850)
The Wife's Sister; or, The Forbidden Marriage (1851)
May and December (1854)
Malvern; or, The Three Marraiges (1855)
Agnes Milbourne (1856)
The Old Vicarage (1856)
The Rival Suitors (1857)
The Stage and the Company (1858)
The Mistakes of a Life (1863)