]We may look to Jane’s writings for clues of how she may have regarded adoptions of children by wealthy relatives.
Could JA have been thinking of her brother’s adoption when writing Frank’s and Fanny’s stories?

There were adoptions and adoptions..How Austens felt about giving away their son we can't know. But the fact that Mr Austen was at first against the idea of Edward spending time at Godmersham was more because he worried that the boy would lag behind in his latin grammar! I think that after the ques tion had been raised, he realised as well as Mrs Austen the gains that might be had from this arrangement.
Was there any sorrow to see him go. Perhaps just for a short moment when he left home for good in 1783. But he was then 16, and this was not a regular adoption as we think of it. He wasn't a child separated from his family. And later on it should prove a very lucky decision to have made. The situation for the widowed Mrs Austen and and Jane and her sister would have looked very gloomy without his help.

And he's said to have been a pleasant charachter,fond of telling stories. And I'm sure that he could tell Jane and the family some interesting things about his travels on the continent.
He stayed in Switzerlnd and Dresden in Germany and in Rome, where he had his portrait painted. It's the one that hangs in Jane Austen's house,Chawton. A second portrait painted earlier in England has been mentioned, but I can't remember having seen it.
He went out in 1786 and stayed out for two years. Even his older brother James went out the same year and stayed one year. He visited Holland and Spain. Interestingly it doesn't say anything about visiting France. This was a few years before the revolution broke out.
I'm not sure what the situation was in France,but no open hostilities between England and France I think.

I would really like to know more about the travels they made. Such tours I belive were supposed to be a mix of education and relaxation. There may exist information about them, but unpublished.

Jane was 8 when her brother was formally adopted. It must have made an impression on her. She was 12-13 when James and Edward came back from their tours. Did she write to them? She might have. And they must have written back to the family.
But those letters have gone for ever missing. Had they existed we would surely have known about them.

Leif G-n