There are connections and landmarks all over the city – you just need to know where to look
Jonathan Rowe
06:00, 25 Apr 2026
Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Lesley Castle was written when she was 16 years old and was partially set in Bristol(Image: Getty)
In April 1928, 58-year-old Caroline Hubback travelled from Rome, where she worked as a translator, to visit the grave of her former barrister grandfather, John Hubback, in St Luke’s churchyard in Brislington.
John Hubback was Jane Austen’s nephew-in-law and tragically spent 35 years in Brislington House Asylum (now Long Fox Manor), where he was a patient after suffering a mental breakdown in 1847, aged 36.
The gravestone also commemorates his wife, Catherine Anne Hubback, Jane Austen’s niece, who, to provide for herself and her three sons, became a novelist.
In 1850, Catherine published a version of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, The Watsons as The Younger Sister. She dedicated the novel to her aunt and wrote, “Though too young to have known her personally, [I] was from early childhood taught to esteem her virtues and admire her talents”.
Jane Austen had stopped writing The Watsons after her father died in 1805, when the family were living at 3 Green Park Buildings East, Bath. Revd George Austen is buried in St Swithin’s churchyard.
Over 13 years, Catherine published nine more novels, and her work became much admired by middle-class Victorian young ladies.
Catherine eventually emigrated to America in 1871, where her two younger sons were living. She regularly visited her husband with her family, even after she had moved to the USA. On her final visit before her death in 1877, aged 59, John failed to recognise her. He outlived her for eight years and died in 1885, aged 74. The inscription on the gravestone reads, “And There Was No More Sea”, from Revelations 21.v1.
The Hubback grave at St Luke’s. John Hubback had been at the Brislington House asylum for 35 years(Image: Jonathan Rowe)
Accompanying Caroline Hubback to Brislington in 1928 was her father, 84-year-old John Henry Hubback, Catherine’s eldest son, who was a retired Liverpool corn merchant.
Caroline and John signed the visitors’ book at St Luke’s on 14 April 1928, which can still be seen today. The connection was only discovered in 2023. Caroline and her father stayed at the Pulteney Hotel, Great Pulteney Street, Bath (now Connaught Mansions flats). The hotel was advertised as “The most palatial hotel in the Queen of English Spas”, offering a “cultured repose and artistic refinement… patronised by the most distinguished personages”.
It is unlikely that Caroline and John Henry Hubback noticed a memorial in the porch of St Luke’s, tucked away in a dark corner, virtually unseen to anyone entering or leaving the church.
Stephen Stuart Bridges died in 1787, aged 46, probably an illegitimate son of the Bridges/Brydges family, who were landowners of Keynsham from the 16th–18th centuries. If this is correct, Bridges would have been a tenuous relation of Jane Austen (and the Hubbacks) by Austen’s maternal great-grandmother, The Honourable Mary Brydges (1666–1703), sister of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos.
John Henry Hubback and Caroline Hubback signed the visitors’ book at at St Luke’s(Image: Jonathan Rowe)
Like her illustrious great-great-aunt Jane, Caroline Hubback never married and also became a writer. She translated a significant work by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1922), becoming the first person to use the word “angst” in English.
Caroline’s translation made Freud’s complex ideas accessible to the English-speaking world. Freud corresponded with lifelong friend, Welshman Ernest Jones of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, and praised Caroline’s translation of Freud’s treatise on the psychology of the sexual libido, which was published by the Institute of Psychoanalysis and The Hogarth Press, which was founded and run by Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
Caroline had obtained a degree in Classical Greats at Oxford and later lectured at Cambridge Training College. She was also the first headmistress of Chester City High School, 1905–09, where anti-permissive “Clean Up TV” campaigner Mary Whitehouse was later a pupil. Caroline lived in Italy, working as a translator, from 1921–39. She died in 1959, aged 87.
Jonathan Rowe will give a double-bill talk on Jane Austen’s Bristol and Catherine Anne Hubback for Brislington Conservation and History Society on May 28 2026 at 7.30 at St Cuthbert’s Church Crypt, Sandy Park Road. In autumn 2026, Gemini Players will present the stage world premiere of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Lesley Castle, adapted by Jonathan Rowe, at St Luke’s Church Hall, Church Parade, Brislington. Jane Austen wrote “Lesley Castle” in 1792, aged 16, and it is the only one of her works to be partly set in Bristol.