Catherine Anne Hubback (née Austen; 7 July 1818 – 25 February 1877) was an English novelist, and the eighth child and fourth daughter of Sir Francis Austen (1774–1865), and niece of English novelist Jane Austen.
She began writing fiction to support herself and her three sons after her husband John Hubback was institutionalized. She had copies of some of her aunt's unfinished works and, in 1850, remembering Austen's proposed plot, she wrote The Younger Sister, a completion of Jane Austen's The Watsons. In the next following thirteen years, she completed nine more novels.
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Life
Born at Chawton, Catherine Hubback began writing fictional novels to support her family after her husband was institutionalized following a nervous breakdown.
In 1870 she emigrated to California, settling in Oakland with her second son Edward. In the autumn of 1876 she moved to Gainesville, Virginia, where she died of pneumonia on 25 February 1877. Her novels, which were then popular, are now rarely read and difficult to obtain. Her best-known work is The Younger Sister.
The Younger Sister
The Watsons, as we know this unfinished novel through the publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh, nephew of Jane Austen in 1871, is generally considered a very promising work, begun in 1804, The editing was unfortunately interrupted, perhaps by the death of Jane Austen's father in 1805.