I was our mother's despair. But when Dad gave me the keys to his library, my heart filled with joy. In the middle of all those books! I couldn't wait to read them all! At 42 years old, and at a time close to her death, the great English writer Jane Austen recalls her youth in a long letter addressed to her sister Cassandra. She remembers her childhood as a girl raised among books, little inclined to the manners of the ladies of the time, but incredibly talented as a storyteller.