The eldest sister of author Jane Austin, over one hundred letters addressed to Cassandra from Jane have survived. These letters have helped historians to construct details about the life of Jane Austen. When her sister died in 1817, Casandra is reported to have destroyed many of her letters, most of them dated after 1795.

In their mother's words, "if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too".

After graduating from Oxford Universityin 1794, one former pupil, Thomas Fowle, became engaged to Cassandra Austen. Fowle needed money to marry and went to the Caribbean with a military expedition as chaplain to his cousin, General Lord Craven. There, Fowle died of yellow fever in 1797. Austen inherited £1000 from him, which gave her a little financial independence but, like her sister, she never married.
____________

Like her sister Jane, Casandra died unmarried. Cassandra was Austen's closest friend and confidante throughout her life.5277
____________

Cassandra is burioed next to her mother.

Regarding her sister Jane, who was buried in Winchester Cathedral, Cassandra wrote:

"It is a satisfaction to me to think that [she is] to lie in a Building she admired so much… I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself"5275