Let me tell you about my sister Jane.

She was such a friend as can never have been surpassed. The sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow.

And though she lived with mother and me, and remained unmarried, hers was not the uneventful life you might suppose.

On the contrary, hers was a life as rich as any because it was a life of the imagination.

The stories she told were among the finest ever found in a work of fiction. Stories of pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility, of life, of love, of loss.

Ever modest, she once said that her writing was ‘the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour’.

She was quite wrong. As long as people read, her books will be read. As long as people feel, her words will move us.

Once, she reluctantly agreed to let me create her portrait. If you think she looks somewhat impatient, you’d be right. I never finished it.

You see, the time she spent sitting for me was time she could have better spent doing the one thing she loved the most.

Writing.