Recent research has identified Victorian women’s magazines as a key channel for investigating domestic ideology. From the 1870s to the fin de siècle, women’s periodicals often presented Jane Austen as a publicly acceptable model of the woman writer. This essay focuses on profiles of Austen published in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, Girl’s Own Paper, and Women’s Penny Paper, investigating how these narratives reiterated and diverged from biographical accounts produced by members of Austen’s family. In these contexts, Austen’s life and works became a point of contention in battles over definitions of female identity.