Fanny Palmer
Fanny Palmer was a woman born in Bermuda, who lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after marry Charles Austen, a naval officer commanding a ship on the North American Station, later moving to the United Kingdom, in 1811, when her husband accepted a new command in those waters.[1]
The pair married in 1807.
When they moved to the UK she got to meet her in-laws, including her sister-in-law Jane Austen. In Austen's novel Persuasion she describes how the heroine's love interest's sister is married to a senior Royal Navy officer, and actually lived with him aboard some of the ships he commanded. Officer's wives only rarely lived aboard their husband's ships, but Fanny was one of the outliers, and commentators believe Fanny inspired the character Sophie Croft in that novel.
Charles's sisters, Jane and Cassandra got along well with Fanny. Fanny died giving birth to her third child, in 1814.
Charles second wife was Fanny's younger sister Harriet.
References
- ↑ Sheila Johnson Kindred (2017). "Jane Austen's Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen". McGill University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vjqqb3. Retrieved 2023-05-25. "'A VERY PLEASING LITTLE WOMAN, she is gentle and amiable in her manners, and appears to make [Charles] very happy' (Fig. 1). Such were the words of Cassandra Austen when she and her sister Jane first met Fanny Palmer, their brother Charles’s Bermuda-born wife."
