A
Quick Overview
Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England
(near Basingstoke). She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second
daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local
rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827
(née Leigh). (See the silhouettes of Jane Austen's father and mother,
apparently taken at different ages.) He had a fairly respectable income
of about £600 a year, supplemented by tutoring pupils who came to
live with him, but was by no means rich (especially with eight children),
and (like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) couldn't have given his daughters
much to marry on. More than one reader has wondered whether the childhood
of the character Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's novel Northanger
Abbey might not reflect her own childhood, at least in part -- Catherine
enjoys "rolling down the green slope at the back of the house" and prefers
cricket and baseball to girls' play
"Austen, Jane" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://search.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=11433&sctn=1>
[Accessed 10 March 2000].
Her
Life
Her
Works
Links
Sources
Her
Works:
Her
Life
Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight: six boys and two girls. Her closest companion was her elder sister,
Cassandra, who also remained unmarried. Their father was a scholar who encouragedthe love of learning in his children. His wife,Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.
Jane Austen's lively and affectionate family circle provided a stimulating context for her writing. Moreover, her experience was carried far beyond Steventon rectory by an extensive network of relationships by blood and friendship. It was this world--of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the neighbourhood, and the country town, with occasional visits to Bath and to London--that she was to use in the settings, characters, and subject matter of her novels.
Her earliest-known writings date from about 1787, and between
then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material that has survived
in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the First, Volume the
Second, and Volume the Third. These contain plays, verses, short
novels, and other prose and show Austen engaged in the parody of
existing literary forms, notably sentimental fiction. Her passage to a
more serious view of life from the exuberant high spirits and
extravagances of her earliest writings is evident in Lady Susan, a
short novel-in-letters written about 1793-94 (and not published until
1871). This portrait of a woman bent on the exercise of her own
powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction
is, in effect, a study of frustration and of woman's fate in a society
that has no use for woman's stronger, more "masculine," talents.
(See epistolary novel.)In 1802 it seems likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris
Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family; but the
next morning she changed her mind. There are also a number of
mutually contradictory stories connecting her with someone with
whom she fell in love but who died very soon after. Since Austen's
novels are so deeply concerned with love and marriage, there is
some point in attempting to establish the facts of these relationships.
Unfortunately, the evidence is unsatisfactory and incomplete.
Cassandra was a jealous guardian of her sister's private life, and
after Jane's death she censored the surviving letters, destroying
many and cutting up others. But Jane Austen's own novels provide
indisputable evidence that their author understood the experience of
love and of love disappointed.The earliest of her novels, Sense and Sensibility, was begun about
1795 as a novel-in-letters called "Elinor and Marianne," after its
heroines. Between October 1796 and August 1797 Austen
completed the first version of Pride and Prejudice, then called
"First Impressions." In 1797 her father wrote to inquire from a
London publisher about the possibilities for its publication, but there
was no answer. Northanger Abbey, the last of the early novels,
was written about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title "Susan."
In 1803 the manuscript of "Susan" was sold to the publisher Richard
Crosby for £10. He took it for immediate publication, but, although
it was advertised, unaccountably it never appeared.Up to this time the tenor of life at Steventon rectory had been
propitious for Jane Austen's growth as a novelist. This stable
environment ended in 1801, however, when George Austen, then
aged 70, retired to Bath with his wife and daughters. For eight years
Jane had to put up with a succession of temporary lodgings or visits
to relatives, in Bath, London, Clifton, Warwickshire, and, finally,
Southampton, where the three women lived from 1805 to 1809. In
1804 Jane began The Watsons but soon abandoned it. In 1804
her dearest friend, Mrs. Anne Lefroy, died suddenly, and in January
1805 her father died in Bath.Eventually, in 1809, Jane's brother Edward was able to provide his
mother and sisters with a large cottage in the village of Chawton,
within his Hampshire estate, not far from Steventon. The prospect of
settling at Chawton had already given Jane Austen a renewed
sense of purpose, and she began to prepare Sense and Sensibility
and Pride and Prejudice for publication. Two years later Thomas
Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which came out,
anonymously, in November 1811. Both of the leading reviews, the
Critical Review and the Quarterly Review, welcomed its blend of
instruction and amusement. Meanwhile, in 1811 Austen had begun
Mansfield Park, which was finished in 1813 and published in 1814.
By then she was an established (though anonymous) author; Egerton
had published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, and later that
year there were second editions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense
and Sensibility. Between January 1814 and March 1815 she wrote
Emma, which appeared in December 1815. In 1816 there was a
second edition of Mansfield Park, published, like Emma, by Lord
Byron's publisher, John Murray. Persuasion (written August
1815-August 1816) was published posthumously, with Northanger
Abbey, in December 1817.The years after 1811 seem to have been the most rewarding of her
life. She had the satisfaction of seeing her work in print and well
reviewed and of knowing that the novels were widely read. They
were so much enjoyed by the Prince Regent (later George IV) that
he had a set in each of his residences; and Emma, at a discreet
royal command, was "respectfully dedicated" to him. The reviewers
praised the novels for their morality and entertainment, admired the
character drawing, and welcomed the homely realism as a refreshing
change from the romantic melodrama then in vogue.For the last 18 months of her life, she was busy writing. Early in
1816, at the onset of her fatal illness, she set down the burlesque
Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various Quarters
(first published in 1871). Until August 1816 she was occupied with
Persuasion, and she looked again at the manuscript of "Susan"
(Northanger Abbey).In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking
satire on health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained
unfinished owing to Austen's declining health. She supposed that
she was suffering from bile, but the symptoms make possible a
modern clinical assessment that she was suffering from Addison's
disease. Her condition fluctuated, but in April she made her will, and
in May she was taken to Winchester to be under the care of an
expert surgeon. She died on July 18, and six days later she was
buried in Winchester Cathedral.Her authorship was announced to the world at large by her brother
Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion. There was no recognition at the time that regency
England had lost its keenest observer and sharpest analyst; no
understanding that a miniaturist (as she maintained that she was and
as she was then seen), a "merely domestic" novelist, could be
seriously concerned with the nature of society and the quality of its
culture; no grasp of Jane Austen as a historian of the emergence of
regency society into the modern world. During her lifetime there had
been a solitary response in any way adequate to the nature of her
achievement: Sir Walter Scott's review of Emma in the Quarterly
Review for March 1816, where he hailed this "nameless author" as
a masterful exponent of "the modern novel" in the new realist
tradition. After her death, there was for long only one significant
essay, the review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in the
Quarterly for January 1821 by the theologian Richard Whately.
Together, Scott's and Whately's essays provided the foundation for
serious criticism of Jane Austen: their insights were appropriated
by critics throughout the 19th century.
Sources
Some of the hard biographical information found here, along with the
photo, were lifted from The Jane Austen Information Page: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/janeinfo.html
It is an excellent source with articles maps illustrations and photos.