Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, a new four-part series from Masterpiece takes on one of the greatest acts of literary vandalism in history—the burning of Austen’s immense library of correspondence, an act perpetrated by her sister, Cassandra, in the years after Jane’s death at 41, in 1817. Presumably done to protect the reputation and privacy of Jane and the Austen family, the cull brought the trove of 3,000 letters down to just 160, effectively erasing what would have been a vivid picture of Austen’s life. The new series, based on Gill Hornby’s novel of the same name, stars Keeley Hawes as Cassandra. The show travels back and forth in time, setting flashbacks of the sisters when young against Cassandra’s mission in the “present.” It’s an emotional story of sisterly love, placed within a richly-imagined historical setting. —Paulina Prosnitz