jane austen easy biography

Jane Austen

(1775-1817)

Who Was Jane Austen?

While not widely known in her own time, Jane Austen's comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility , are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism.

The seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen, Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Austen's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Austen was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. The children also authored and put on plays and charades.

Over the span of her life, Austen would become especially close to her father and older sister, Cassandra. Indeed, she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work.

To acquire a more formal education, Austen and Cassandra were sent to boarding schools during Austen's pre-adolescence. During this time, Austen and her sister caught typhus, with Austen nearly succumbing to the illness. After a short period of formal education cut short by financial constraints, they returned home and lived with the family from that time forward.

Literary Works

Ever fascinated by the world of stories, Austen began to write in bound notebooks. In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Freindship [sic], a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing. The next year she wrote The History of England... , a 34-page parody of historical writing that included illustrations drawn by Cassandra. These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as Austen's Juvenilia .

Austen spent much of her early adulthood helping run the family home, playing piano, attending church, and socializing with neighbors. Her nights and weekends often involved cotillions, and as a result, she became an accomplished dancer. On other evenings, she would choose a novel from the shelf and read it aloud to her family, occasionally one she had written herself. She continued to write, developing her style in more ambitious works such as Lady Susan , another epistolary story about a manipulative woman who uses her sexuality, intelligence and charm to have her way with others. Austen also started to write some of her future major works, the first called Elinor and Marianne , another story told as a series of letters, which would eventually be published as Sense and Sensibility . She began drafts of First Impressions , which would later be published as Pride and Prejudice , and Susan , later published as Northanger Abbey by Jane's brother, Henry, following Austen's death.

In 1801, Austen moved to Bath with her father, mother and Cassandra. Then, in 1805, her father died after a short illness. As a result, the family was thrust into financial straits; the three women moved from place to place, skipping between the homes of various family members to rented flats. It was not until 1809 that they were able to settle into a stable living situation at Austen's brother Edward's cottage in Chawton.

Now in her 30s, Austen started to anonymously publish her works. In the period spanning 1811-16, she pseudonymously published Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice (a work she referred to as her "darling child," which also received critical acclaim), Mansfield Park and Emma .

In 1816, at the age of 41, Austen started to become ill with what some say might have been Addison's disease. She made impressive efforts to continue working at a normal pace, editing older works as well as starting a new novel called The Brothers , which would be published after her death as Sanditon . Another novel, Persuasion , would also be published posthumously. At some point, Austen's condition deteriorated to such a degree that she ceased writing. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.

While Austen received some accolades for her works while still alive, with her first three novels garnering critical attention and increasing financial reward, it was not until after her death that her brother Henry revealed to the public that she was an author.

Today, Austen is considered one of the greatest writers in English history, both by academics and the general public. In 2002, as part of a BBC poll, the British public voted her No. 70 on a list of "100 Most Famous Britons of All Time." Austen's transformation from little-known to internationally renowned author began in the 1920s, when scholars began to recognize her works as masterpieces, thus increasing her general popularity. The Janeites, a Jane Austen fan club, eventually began to take on wider significance, similar to the Trekkie phenomenon that characterizes fans of the Star Trek franchise. The popularity of her work is also evident in the many film and TV adaptations of Emma , Mansfield Park , Pride and Prejudice , and Sense and Sensibility , as well as the TV series and film Clueless , which was based on Emma .

Austen was in the worldwide news in 2007, when author David Lassman submitted to several publishing houses a few of her manuscripts with slight revisions under a different name, and they were routinely rejected. He chronicled the experience in an article titled "Rejecting Jane," a fitting tribute to an author who could appreciate humor and wit.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Jane Austen
• Birth Year: 1775
• Birth date: December 16, 1775
• Birth City: Steventon, Hampshire, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Emma.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Death Year: 1817
• Death date: July 18, 1817
• Death City: Winchester, Hampshire, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Jane Austen Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/writer/jane-austen
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 6, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
• I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
• There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

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Profile of Jane Austen

Novelist of the Romantic Period

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• B.A., Mundelein College
• M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School

Known for: popular novels of the Romantic period

Dates: December 16, 1775 - July 18, 1817

About Jane Austen

Jane Austen's father, George Austen, was an Anglican clergyman, and raised his family in his parsonage. Like his wife, Cassandra Leigh Austen, he was descended from landed gentry that had become involved in manufacturing with the coming of the Industrial Revolution . George Austen supplemented his income as a rector with farming and with tutoring boys who boarded with the family. The family was associated with the Tories and maintained a sympathy for the Stuart succession rather than the Hanoverian.

Jane was sent for the first year or so of her life to stay with her wetnurse. Jane was close to her sister Cassandra, and letters to Cassandra that survive have helped later generations understand the life and work of Jane Austen.

As was usual for girls at the time, Jane Austen was educated primarily at home; her brothers, other than George, were educated at Oxford. Jane was well-read; her father had a large library of books including novels. From 1782 to 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra studied at the home of their aunt, Ann Cawley, returning after a bout with typhus, of which Jane nearly died. In 1784, the sisters were at a boarding school in Reading, but the expense was too great and the girls returned home in 1786.

Jane Austen began writing , about 1787, circulating her stories mainly to family and friends. On George Austen's retirement in 1800, he moved the family to Bath, a fashionable social retreat. Jane found the environment was not conducive to her writing, and wrote little for some years, though she sold her first novel while living there. The publisher held it from publication until after her death.

Marriage Possibilities

Jane Austen never married. Her sister, Cassandra, was engaged for a time to Thomas Fowle, who died in the West Indies and left her with a small inheritance. Jane Austen had several young men court her. One was Thomas Lefroy whose family opposed the match, another a young clergyman who suddenly died. Jane accepted the proposal of the wealthy Harris Bigg-Wither, but then withdrew her acceptance to the embarrassment of both parties and their families.

When George Austen died in 1805, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved first to the home of Jane's brother Francis, who was frequently away. Their brother, Edward, had been adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin; when Edward's wife died, he provided a home for Jane and Cassandra and their mother on his estate. It was at this home in Chawton where Jane resumed her writing. Henry, a failed banker who had become a clergyman like his father, served as Jane's literary agent.

Jane Austen died, probably of Addison's disease, in 1817. Her sister, Cassandra, nursed her during her illness. Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Novels Published

Jane Austen's novels were first published anonymously; her name does not appear as author until after her death. Sense and Sensibility was written "By a Lady," and posthumous publications of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were credited simply to the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park . Her obituaries disclosed that she had written the books, as does her brother Henry's "Biographical Notice" in editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .

Juvenilia were published posthumously.

• Northanger Abbey  - sold 1803, not published until 1819
• Sense and Sensibility  - published 1811 but Austen had to pay the printing costs
• Pride and Prejudice  - 1812
• Mansfield Park  - 1814
• Emma  - 1815
• Persuasion  - 1819
• Father: George Austen, Anglican clergyman, died 1805
• Mother: Cassandra Leigh
• James, also a Church of England clergyman
• George, institutionalized, disability uncertain: may have been mental retardation, may have been deafness
• Henry, banker then Anglican clergyman, served as Jane's agent with her publishers
• Francis and Charles, fought in the Napoleonic wars, became admirals
• Edward, adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight
• older sister Cassandra (1773 - 1845) who also never married
• Aunt: Ann Cawley; Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra studied at her home 1782-3
• Aunt: Jane Leigh Perrot, who hosted the family for a time after George Austen retired
• Cousin: Eliza, Comtesse of Feuillide, whose husband was guillotined during the Reign of Terror in France, and who later married Henry

Selected Quotations

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

"The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it."

"What strange creatures brothers are!"

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be kindly spoken of."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to Yes, she ought to say No, directly."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage."

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

"Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments."

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

"It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble."

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

"...as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"...the soul is of no sect, no party: it is, as you say, our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious and political distinctions."

"You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."

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• A Timeline of Jane Austen Works
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• An Introduction to the Romantic Period
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Jane Austen: A brief biography

Jane Austen was born at the Rectory in Steventon , a village in north-east Hampshire, on 16th December 1775.

She was the seventh child and second daughter of the rector, the Revd George Austen, and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh). Of her brothers, two were clergymen, one inherited rich estates in Kent and Hampshire from a distant cousin and the two youngest became Admirals in the Royal Navy; her only sister, like Jane herself, never married.

Steventon Rectory was Jane Austen’s home for the first 25 years of her life. From here she travelled to Kent to stay with her brother Edward in his mansion at Godmersham Park near Canterbury, and she also had some shorter holidays in Bath , where her aunt and uncle lived. During the 1790s she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey; her trips to Kent and Bath gave her the local colour for the settings of these last two books.

In 1801 the Revd George Austen retired, and he and his wife, with their two daughters Jane and Cassandra, left Steventon and settled in Bath.

The Austens rented No. 4 Sydney Place from 1801-1804, and then stayed for a few months at No. 3 Green Park Buildings East, where Mr. Austen died in 1805. While the Austens were based in Bath, they went on holidays to seaside resorts in the West Country, including Lyme Regis in Dorset – this gave Jane the background for Persuasion.

Jane fell ill in 1816 – possibly with Addison’s Disease – and in the summer of 1817 her family took her to Winchester for medical treatment. However, the doctor could do nothing for her, and she died peacefully on 18th July 1817 at their lodgings in No. 8 College Street. She was buried a few days later in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Jane’s novels reflect the world of the English country gentry of the period, as she herself had experienced it. Due to the timeless appeal of her amusing plots, and the wit and irony of her style, her works have never been out of print since they were first published, and are frequently adapted for stage, screen and television. Jane Austen is now one of the best-known and best-loved authors in the English-speaking world.

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Jane Austen Biography

It is said that Jane Austen lived a quiet life. Only a few of her manuscripts remain in existence and the majority of her correspondence was either burned or heavily edited by her sister, Cassandra, shortly before she died. As a result, the details that are known about her are rare and inconsistent. What can be surmised through remaining letters and personal acquaintances is that she was a woman of stature, humor and keen intelligence. Family remembrances of Austen portray her in a kind, almost saintly light, but critics who have studied her books and the remnants of her letters believe she was sharper than her family wished the public to think.

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on December 16, 1775 and grew up in a tight-knit family. She was the seventh of eight children, with six brothers and one sister. Her parents, George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, were married in 1764. Her father was an orphan but with the help of a rich uncle he attended school and was ordained by the Church of England. Subsequently, he was elevated enough in social standing to provide Cassandra a worthy match whose family was of a considerably higher social status. In 1765, they moved to Steventon, a village in north Hampshire, about 60 miles southwest of London, where her father was appointed rector.

Like their father, two of Austen’s older brothers, James and Henry, were ordained and spent most of their lives in the Church of England. Of all her brothers, Austen was closest to Henry; he served as her agent, and then after her death, as her biographer. George, the second oldest son, was born mentally deficient and spent the majority of his life in institutions. The third son, Edward, was adopted by their father’s wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight, and eventually inherited the Knight estate in Chawton, where Austen would later complete most of her novels. Cassandra, Austen’s only sister, was born in 1773. Austen and Cassandra were close friends and companions throughout their entire lives. It is through the remaining letters to Cassandra that biographers are able to piece Austen’s life together. The two youngest Austen boys, Francis and Charles, both served in the Navy as highly decorated admirals.

When Austen was 7, she and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to attend school but sometime later the girls came down with typhus and were brought back to Steventon. When Austen was 9 they attended the Abbey School in Reading. Shortly after enrolling however, the girls were withdrawn, because their father could no longer afford tuition. Though this completed their formal schooling, the girls continued their education at home, with the help of their brothers and father.

The Austens often read aloud to one another. This evolved into short theatrical performances that Austen had a hand in composing. The Austen family plays were performed in their barn and were attended by family members and a few close neighbors. By the age of 12, Austen was writing for herself as well as for her family. She wrote poems and several parodies of the dramatic fiction that was popular at the time, such as History of England and Love and Freindship [sic]. She then compiled and titled them: Volume the First , Volume the Second and Volume the Third .

Austen is said to have looked like her brother Henry, with bright hazel eyes and curly hair, over which she always wore a cap. She won the attention of a young Irish gentleman named Tom Lefroy. Unfortunately, Lefroy was in a position that required him to marry into money. He later married an heiress and became a prominent political figure in Ireland.

In 1795, when she was 20, Austen entered a productive phase and created what was later referred to as her “First Trilogy.” Prompted by increasing social engagements and flirtations, she began writing Elinor and Marianne , a novel in letters, which would eventually be reworked and retitled Sense and Sensibility . The following year, she wrote First Impressions , which was rejected by a publisher in 1797. It was the first version of Pride and Prejudice . She began another novel in 1798, titled Susan , which evolved into Northanger Abbey .

The Austens lived happily in Steventon until 1801, when her father suddenly announced he was moving the family to Bath. Austen was unhappy with the news. At the time, Bath was a resort town for the nearly wealthy with many gossips and social climbers. As they traveled that summer, however, she fell in love with a young clergyman who promised to meet them at the end of their journey. Several months later he fell ill and died.

Bath was difficult for Austen. She started but did not finish The Watsons and had a hard time adjusting to social demands. She accepted a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the son of an old family friend, but changed her mind the next day. A few years later, in 1805, her father died, leaving Jane, Cassandra and their mother without enough money to live comfortably. As a result, the Austen women relied on the hospitality of friends and family until they were permanently relocated to a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, belonging to her brother Edward Austen-Knight. There, Austen began the most productive period of her life, publishing several books and completing her “Second Trilogy.”

Austen finished the final drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in 1811. They were published shortly after and she immediately set to work on Mansfield Park . In 1814, Mansfield Park was published and Emma was started. By this time, Austen was gaining some recognition for her writing, despite the fact that neither Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice were published under her name.

Austen began showing symptoms of illness while she worked on Persuasion , her last completed novel. It was published with Northanger Abbey after her death. Unknown at the time, Austen most likely suffered from Addison’s disease, whose symptoms include fever, back pain, nausea and irregular skin pigmentation. On her deathbed, when asked by her sister Cassandra if there was anything she required, she requested only “death itself.” She died at the age of 41 on July 18, 1817 with her sister at her side.

Jane Austen’s Enduring Popularity

When asked why Jane Austen’s works are so popular, Richard Jenkyns, author of A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen and descendant of Austen’s older brother, said: “I don’t think it’s nostalgia for the past and all those empire-line dresses and britches tight on the thigh, all that sort of thing. I guess that she is popular because she is modern… I think her popularity is in her representing a world, in its most important aspects, that we know.”

Although living in a world that seems remote in time and place, Jane Austen’s characters have experiences and emotions that are familiar to us. They misjudge people based on appearances, they’re embarrassed by their parents, they flirt and they fall in love. Her characters face social restrictions that can be translated into any environment, from a California high school in Clueless to an interracial romance in Bride and Prejudice . The critical and commercial success of the numerous recent film and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, including nine of Pride and Prejudice , testifies to her timeless and universal appeal. Yet they fail to fully capture the genius of her writing. She was a great writer, a sharp wit and a wonderful satirist.

Takeoffs of Austen’s work, such as Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless , have been huge successes. A number of sequels to Pride and Prejudice have been written such as Lady Catherine’s Necklace by Joan Aiken; Mr. Darcy’s Daughters by Elizabeth Aston; and Pemberley: or Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant. Other novels such as Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and Kate Fenton’s Vanity and Vexation: A Novel of Pride and Prejudice have contemporary settings using Austen’s characters or plots.

In The Eye of the Story , Eudora Welty wrote that Austen’s novels withstand time because “they pertain not to the outside world but to the interior, to what goes on perpetually in the mind and heart.” Perhaps, for these reasons, Austen’s work continues to fascinate, entertain and inspire us.

• Tucker, George Holbert. Jane Austen the Woman . St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
• Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen and Her World . Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
• “Jane Austen.” Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 3: Writers of the Romantic Period, 1789-1832 . Gale Research, 1992.

Content last updated: October 31, 2005

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Jane Austen facts for kids

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist . She wrote many books of romantic fiction about the gentry . Her works made her one of the most famous and beloved writers in English literature . She is one of the great masters of the English novel.

Austen's works criticized sentimental novels in the late 18th century, and are part of the change to nineteenth-century realism . She wrote about typical people in everyday life. This gave the English novel its first distinctly modern character. Austen's stories are often comic , but they also show how women depended on marriage for social standing and economic security. Her works are also about moral problems.

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke . Educated mostly by her father and older brothers, and also by her own reading , she lived with her family at Steventon. They moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After he died in 1805, she moved around with her mother. In 1809, they settled in Chawton , near Alton, Hampshire . In May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor . She died there on 18 July 1817.

Jane Austen was very modest about her own genius . She once famously described her work as "the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory , on which I work with so fine a brush , as produces little effect after much labor ". When she was a girl she wrote stories. Her works were printed only after much revision . Only four of her novels were printed while she was alive. They were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion , were printed in 1817 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen. Persuasion was written shortly before her death. She also wrote two earlier works, Lady Susan , and an unfinished novel, The Watsons . She had been working on a new novel, Sanditon , but she died before she could finish it. She is now a well known great writer.

Early life and education

Early writings, related pages, images for kids.

Biographical facts about Jane Austen are "famously scarce" (few). Only a few letters remain (it is estimated that only 160 out of Austen's 3,000 letters survive). Her sister Cassandra (to whom most of the letters were written) burned "the greater part" of the ones she kept. The letters she did not destroy she censored . Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Francis Austen, Jane's brother. Most of the biographies written about her for 50 years after she died was by her relatives, who often described her as "good quiet Aunt Jane". Scholars have not been able to find much information after that.

Austen's parents, George Austen (1731–1805), and his wife, Cassandra (1739–1827), were both part of the gentry . Cassandra was a part of the important Leigh family. George Austen, however, was of a lower class of society. He had first met Cassandra at Oxford, while she was meeting her uncle Theophilus. George and Cassandra married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath .

Austen had a large family. She had six brothers—James (1765–1819), George (1766–1838), Edward (1767–1852), Henry Thomas (1771–1850), Francis William (Frank) (1774–1865), Charles John (1779–1852)—and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth (1773–1845), who died without marrying. Jane deeply loved Cassandra, and they were both best friends. Of her brothers, Austen was most close to Henry, who helped spread and influence her writing. "Oh, what a Henry!" she once wrote. George was almost ten years older than Jane. He suffered from fits and was not able to develop normally. His father wrote of him, "We have this comfort, he cannot be a bad or a wicked child". He may also have been deaf and mute. Jane knew sign language (she mentioned talking "with my fingers" in a letter) and could have communicated with him. Charles and Frank served in the navy . Edward was adopted by his fourth cousin, Thomas Knight. He became "Edward Knight" instead of Edward Austen in 1812.

Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon rectory. She was christened at home and then, as the Book of Common Prayer directs, brought to church for the baptism to be certified in public on 5 April 1776. A few months after she was born, her mother hired a woman named Elizabeth Littlewood to nurse her. Littlewood took care of Austen for about a year. According to family tradition , Jane and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Crawley in 1783. They moved with her to Southampton later in the year. Both girls caught typhus and Jane almost died. After that, Austen was educated at home until she went to boarding school with Cassandra early in 1785. She learned some French , spelling , needlework , dancing , music , and probably drama . In the winter of 1786, Jane and Cassandra went back home.

Austen also learned much by reading books. Her father and brothers helped choose the books she read. George Austen seemed to have let his daughters read the books in his large library freely. He also allowed Austen's experiments in writing, and gave her costly paper and other writing materials.

Jane Austen and her family also enjoyed acting out plays privately. Most of the plays were comedies . This might have been a way for Austen's comedic and satirical talents to develop.

Perhaps from as early as 1787, Austen began writing poems , short stories, and plays for fun. Austen later put together "fair copies" of 29 of these early works into three notebooks. They are now called the Juvenilia . It has pieces which were first written down between 1787 and 1793. Jane Austen had arranged her writing during this time into three volumes, namely Volume the First , Volume the Second and Volume the Third . There is some proof that Austen continued to work on these pieces later in life. Her nephew and niece, James Edward and Anna Austen, may have made further additions to her work in around 1814. In these works were included Love and Freindship [ sic ] which was completed in 1790 and Lesley Castle which was completed in 1792. In Love and Freindship , she laughed at popular sentimental novels. She also wrote The History of England , which had 13 watercolour pictures by her sister Cassandra inside it.

Jane Austen started to feel increasingly unwell during 1816, which was the year when her novel 'Persuasion' was published. On 24 May 1817, she moved to Winchester in search for a cure to her illness. She died on 18 July 1817, aged 41. Although there is no conclusive evidence to prove the cause of her death, it seems likely that it was Addison's disease that killed her. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral on 24 July 1817.

• Reception history of Jane Austen
• Austen, Jane. Catharine and Other Writings . Ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN : 0-19-282823-1.
• Austen, Jane. The History of England . Ed. David Starkey. Icon Books, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. ISBN : 0-06-135195-4.
• Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's Letters . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN : 0-19-283297-2.

Biographies

• Austen, Henry Thomas. "Biographical Notice of the Author". Northanger Abbey and Persuasion . London: John Murray, 1817.
• Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen . 1926. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
• Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, A Family Record . London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1913.
• Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen: A Literary Life . London: Macmillan, 1991. ISBN : 0-333-44701-8.
• Honan, Park. Jane Austen: A Life . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN : 0-312-01451-1.
• Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record . Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN : 0-521-53417-8.
• Nokes, David. Jane Austen: A Life . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN : 0-520-21606-7.
• Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN : 0-679-44628-1.

Essay collections

• Alexander, Christine and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN : 0-521-81293-3.
• Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN : 0-521-49867-8.
• Grey, J. David, ed. The Jane Austen Companion . New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN : 0025455400.
• Lynch, Deidre, ed. Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. ISBN : 0-691-05005-8.
• Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1812–1870 . Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. ISBN : 0-7100-2942-X.
• Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870–1940 . Vol. 2. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. ISBN : 0-7102-0189-3.
• Todd, Janet, ed. Jane Austen in Context . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN : 0-521-82644-6.
• Watt, Ian, ed. Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. ISBN : 9780130537515.

Monographs and articles

• Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction . London: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN : 0-19-506160-8.
• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. ISBN : 0-19-812968-8.
• Byrne, Paula. Jane Austen and the Theatre. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. ISBN : 978-1-84725-047-6.
• Collins, Irene. Jane Austen and the Clergy . London: The Hambledon Press, 1994. ISBN : 1-85285-114-7.
• Devlin, D.D. Jane Austen and Education . London: Macmillan, 1975. ISBN : 0064916758.
• Duckworth, Alistair M. The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. ISBN : 0-8018-1269-0.
• Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel . Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1983. ISBN : 0-389-20228-2.
• Ferguson, Moira. " Mansfield Park , Slavery, Colonialism, and Gender". Oxford Literary Review 13 (1991): 118–39.
• Galperin, William. The Historical Austen . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. ISBN : 0-8122-3687-4.
• Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN : 0-521-65213-8.
• Gubar, Susan and Sandra Gilbert. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination . 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. ISBN : 0-300-02596-3.
• Harding, D.W., "Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen". Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays . Ed. Ian Watt. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
• Jenkyns, Richard. A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN : 0199276617.
• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN : 0-226-40139-1.
• Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction . Brighton: Harvester, 1983. ISBN : 0-7108-0468-7.
• Koppel, Gene. The Religious Dimension in Jane Austen's Novels . Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988.
• Lascelles, Mary. Jane Austen and Her Art . Original publication 1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
• Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad . London: Chatto & Windus, 1960.
• Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Development . New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Lynch, Deidre. The Economy of Character . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN : 0-226-49820-4.
• MacDonagh, Oliver. Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN : 0-300-05084-4.
• Miller, D. A. Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. ISBN : 0-691-12387-X.
• Mudrick, Marvin. Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.
• Page, Norman. The Language of Jane Austen . Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. ISBN : 0-631-08280-8.
• Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN : 0-226-67528-9.
• Raven, James. The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN : 0-300-12261-6.
• Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism . New York: Vintage Books, 1993. ISBN : 0-679-75054-1.
• Todd, Janet. The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN : 978-0-521-67469-0.
• Waldron, Mary. Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN : 0-521-00388-1.
• Wiltshire, John. Recreating Jane Austen . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN : 0-521-00282-6.
• Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: The Picture of Health . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN : 0-521-41476-8.

Online works

Steventon Church, as depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen

Steventon rectory, as depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen , was in a valley and surrounded by meadows.

Thomas Langlois Lefroy, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, by W. H. Mote (1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted that he had been in love with Austen: "It was boyish love."

Austen's house, 4 Sydney Place, Bath, Somerset

Austen was a regular visitor to her brother Edward's home, Godmersham Park in Kent , between 1798 and 1813. The house is regarded as an influence on her works.

Watercolour of Jane Austen by her sister, Cassandra , 1804.

Cottage in Chawton , Hampshire where Austen lived during her last eight years of life, now Jane Austen's House Museum

First edition title page from Sense and Sensibility , Austen's first published novel (1811)

8 College Street in Winchester where Austen lived her last days and died.

Austen commemoration on the wall of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey , London

• This page was last modified on 27 October 2023, at 13:10. Suggest an edit .

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The not-so-gentle art of Persuasion

W hen Jane Austen's brother Henry wrote the first 'Biographical Notice' about the author for the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in 1818, he clearly thought it would be the last word on the subject. 'Short and easy will be the task of the mere biographer,' he wrote. 'A life of usefulness, literature and religion was not by any means a life of event.' One hundred and eighty years and possibly as large a number of books on Austen later, her fame and her readership worldwide continue to grow and however 'uneventful' and ill-documented her life, there are always plenty of biographers queuing up to write it. Without any new manuscripts having come to light, or any miraculous discoveries (of a diary, say, or a hidden stash of uncensored letters), there seems more to say about Jane Austen than ever.

Austen was a prolific correspondent, but most of her letters were destroyed after her death by her sister, Cassandra. The Victorians used the letters to corroborate the popular cult of 'Divine Jane's harmless gentility', and now the same material is called as evidence to prove that she was 'Noisy and Wild', 'Profligate and Shocking' and a regular 'Wild Beast', to quote three chapter headings from David Nokes's book.

We are used to revisionism in biography and tend to equate it with progress towards truth. What is fascinating about the two latest biographies of Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin and David Nokes, is that they seem to be revising in concert, using just the same material, and come to pretty much the same general conclusions, but their emphases and subtler interpretations are remarkably unalike. Austen hated Bath, or loved Bath, had a happy or unhappy childhood, did or didn't resent the good fortune of her rich brother Edward or neglect her mad brother George, depending on which book you read.

Mysterious contradictions emerge. According to Nokes, Austen's relationship with her friend Mrs Lefroy 'was marked as much by suspicion as by affection', while in Tomalin's version she is Austen's 'dear friend' and role model, 'the ideal parent'. Both conclusions are supportable by evidence, but obviously not all the evidence. The result may not be very illuminating about Jane Austen, but speaks volumes about the art of biography. Nokes, a well-known academic and the biographer of Swift and John Gay, sets out vigorously 'to challenge the familiar image of (Jane Austen) as a literary maiden aunt'.

He tackles the problem of our over-familiarity with Jane Austen's works and life by devoting a great deal of his book to some of the colourful secondary characters in her family circle, such as Jane' s cousin Eliza Hancock, her kleptomaniac aunt, her dashing sailor brothers and that other 'lost' brother, George. Nokes's research is splendid, but spoiled for me by his method of dramatising it. However amusing it may be to open a life of Austen in the following way, 'It is the rainy season in the Sunderbunds. Inside his lonely makeshift hut the Surgeon-Extraordinary sits writing a letter home...', this kind of semi-fictionalised reconstruction simply will not do.

In his introduction, Nokes attempts to justify 'some degree of invention' on the grounds that it can produce interesting insights, but seems confused about his own methodology, stating in the same paragraph both that his biography is 'written forwards' without the conventional 'objective' reliance on hindsight and that he has 'drawn quotations from the later published works as indications of earlier unpublished preoccupations' (whatever those may be).

This is not at all the monumental scholarly biography one might have expected from such a writer (and which is needed). Nokes is in sympathy with the anarchic energy of Austen's juvenilia, but his treatment of the novels is sketchy, and over the length of 500 pages, his relish for cynicism in Austen's letters begins to look like special pleading in the cause of killing off the maiden aunt. I think he is right to draw attention to the satiric verse about St Swithin that Austen wrote on her deathbed (and which Tomalin only glances at), but why does he have to repeat his point three times and in almost exactly the same words? And why is he so confident that 'the sole purpose' of Austen's choice of pseudonym, 'Mrs Ashton Dennis', was to enable her to sign off letters to an unresponsive publisher with the initials MAD? Claire Tomalin's approach is far less dogmatic or sensational.

But what Tomalin lacks in pyrotechnics is more than made up for by the confidence in her judgment that her thoughtful and honest approach inspires. Her reading of Austen is highly intelligent but never showy, and I consider her very reasonable suggestion that the precise dating of Jane's compositions by Cassandra may point to the existence (and destruction) of a diary a really masterly stroke. The lacunae in Austen's papers have always tempted speculation about her inner life: romance, malice, incest, depression and lesbianism are some of the suggestions dealt with by both biographers here, but no one before Tomalin has, to my knowledge, exercised their ingenuity and imagination so well on the life of the body; the 'lost unrecorded history' of physical discomfort, menstruation, travel, food and appearance.

Both authors are at pains to point out that though Austen's own life was outwardly uneventful, she was surrounded by drama, even scandal. Nokes covers the trial of Jane's aunt Leigh-Perrot in fascinating detail, and takes great interest, as did Jane herself, in the naval careers of her brothers. Tomalin has a lengthy section on the Comte de Feuillide, the cousin-in-law who was guillotined in the French Revolution, and both writers enjoy the glamour surrounding Eliza Hancock, Warren Hastings's '(god)daughter' as Nokes teasingly refers to her. Earlier biographies only hinted at some of these stories, but no one will be able to write about Austen again without allowing for the context they provide and the insight into her worldly novels, which as Tomalin says, are 'ways of looking at England'.

'What is become of all the shyness in the world?' Austen wrote in a letter to Cassandra, noting the inquisitive manners of a young visitor who wanted to examine the treasures of her writing-desk drawer. Manners and moral fashions change, and as Austen's world slips further and further out of our understanding, Tomalin and Nokes between them have done a great service by keeping the lines of communication open.

Having read both books in succession, with their thorough use of the same well-known and well-loved quotes from the novels and letters, only reminds the reader how inexhaustible Austen is. We think we keep reinventing her when, like any great artist, she is reinventing us.

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Two centuries after Jane Austen’s death, the early 19th-century English author’s words persist in our culture.

This drawing of Jane Austen was made by her sister, Cassandra, around 1810. (Image credit: National Portrait Gallery, London)

Austen, who died on July 18, 1817, at 41, is known for her six completed novels, among them the highly adapted Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility . Originally published anonymously, the works gained recognition among readers and scholars in the 20th century.

Now, most literary academics can’t imagine discussing the modern novel without crediting Austen’s contributions to the art form.

Stanford English Professor Alex Woloch said he doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t interested in Austen’s work.

An expert on the history and theory of the novel, Woloch said he focused a large part of his doctoral dissertation, which examined the creation of minor and major characters in novels, on Austen. He has subsequently taught and studied her work throughout his career.

“Austen is one of the biggest literary figures in English,” said Woloch, chair of the Department of English. “At this point, she is somewhat like Shakespeare, her centrality is so established.”

Austen’s writing stands out for its comedy, self-awareness and realistic, detailed portrayals of characters and their relationships.

“There is a level of intelligence in her work that the reader feels, and it has to do with her psychological perceptiveness and the sheer skill of her writing,” Woloch said. “When you read Jane Austen, you sense that you’re in the hands of someone authoritative and reliable … But there is always this feeling that she is one step ahead of you.”

Literary scholars, in particular, point to Austen’s subtle, innovative use of free indirect discourse as a style of third-person narrative. This style, in which a character’s perspective and thoughts intertwine with the narrator of the story, is now widespread in modern fiction, but was just taking shape in the late 18th and early 19th century.

“Austen was really ahead of her time,” Woloch said. “She is canonical in a way that she probably would not have anticipated. Her work falls so easily into dialogue not just with past literature but, strangely, with novels that had yet to be written.”

Austen’s style set the stage for the movement of literary realism, which took off in the mid-19th century and included writers such as Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot and Charles Dickens, said Elizabeth Wilder, an English PhD candidate.

“Because Austen’s contributions have been so widely adopted and adapted by other authors, it can be easy to forget how groundbreaking her work really was,” Wilder said.

Austen’s popularity was modest largely because her works were published anonymously. Her current renown can be traced to the 1940s when literary scholars began analyzing her work more closely and feminist critics, in particular, brought her achievements to light.

“Maybe no canonical author seems more accessible than Austen,” English doctoral student Matthew Redmond said. “People speak of loving Shakespeare, but too many don’t feel equal to the task of reading him. Not so with Austen.”

Pride and Prejudice , Austen’s most popular work, exemplifies the qualities of her storytelling.

“ Pride and Prejudice has transcended the novel form and become a modern myth,” Redmond said. “Had Austen written only that work, we could still speak of her as having dramatically increased the depth and resolution of English prose.”

But many scholars see Emma , where Austen’s unique narration style reaches full force, as her greatest novel, Woloch said.

“ Emma is famous in that you could reread it and it gets more interesting,” said Woloch, who often teaches Emma in his classes. “Not every piece of literature holds up with time. Some things become boring.”

Wilder, whose dissertation includes the study of Austen’s work, said she considers Persuasion to be one of the author’s most important works as well.

The book, which was Austen’s last completed novel, takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and focuses on themes of regret, loss and lives unled, more so than her other works.

“For me, Persuasion is one of Austen’s most interesting and important novels – in part because she breaks a lot of her own rules in it,” Wilder said. “The novel’s setting invites us to think about the relationship of the political to the personal or the domestic. It’s startling to think of Austen as a war novelist, but Persuasion reminds us of just how extensive her vision was.”

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Jane Austen: A Biography Paperback – January 1, 1986

• Print length 294 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Gollancz
• Publication date January 1, 1986
• ISBN-10 0575038772
• ISBN-13 978-0575038776
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gollancz (January 1, 1986)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 294 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0575038772
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0575038776
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
• Best Sellers Rank: #2,607,046 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

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