Did Jane Austen Like Music?

Jane Austen’s surviving letters make intriguing reading. It is easy (and not uncommon) to lift passing remarks and quote them as evidence for all kinds of biographical details. It has been proposed, for example, that Austen disliked music. In May 1801, when Austen had just moved to Bath with her parents, she met Mrs. and Miss Holder, mother and daughter. She wrote to her sister Cassandra, “It is the fashion to think them both very detestable, but they are so civil, & their gowns look so white & so nice… that I cannot utterly abhor them, especially as Miss Holder owns that she has no taste for Music.”