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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.

Jane Austen

"let other pens dwell on guilt and misery." - jane austen.

Profile of Jane Austen

Novelist of the Romantic Period

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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."

• A Timeline of Jane Austen Works
• 'Sense and Sensibility' Quotes
• 'Pride and Prejudice' Overview
• 'Pride and Prejudice' Characters: Descriptions and Significance
• 'Pride and Prejudice' Summary
• Jane Eyre Study Guide
• 42 Must-Read Feminist Female Authors
• Biography of Jane Seymour, Third Wife of Henry VIII
• Quotes from Abolitionist and Feminist Angelina Grimké
• 'Jane Eyre' Questions for Study and Discussion
• An Introduction to the Romantic Period
• 'Pride and Prejudice' Quotes Explained
• Biography of Charlotte Brontë
• Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
• Biography of Calamity Jane, Legendary Figure of the Wild West
• Individuality and Self-Worth: Feminist Accomplishment in Jane Eyre

Jane Austen: A Biography

Jane austen 1775 – 1817.

The Jane Austen Centre’s website states: ‘Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors.’

One wonders at the restraint in that, considering that Jane Austen is indisputably one of the greatest English writers – some say the greatest after Shakespeare – and certainly the greatest English novelist and one of the most famous English women who ever lived. The insights found in Jane Austen’s quotes from her many works is very impressive.

A mark of her genius is that she was there near the beginning of the novel’s emergence as a literary form, and all of her novels, including the earliest of them, written when she was very young, are perfectly formed. No English novelist has since bettered them and the novel hasn’t developed much since her definitive examples of the form. That is amazing when one thinks about how the other art forms –painting, music, architecture – fall out of fashion with each generation, and give way to new forms. And also when one thinks about how many novels have been written since hers.

Jane Austen – a portrait by her sister Cassandra

One has to ask why it is that her novels have lasted and are still widely read. One thing is certain: when one settles down with a Jane Austen novel one can be sure that there are going to be hours of pleasure and a lot of chuckling.

Jane Austen prods away at the social conventions of her time and how they fashion and condition the English landed gentry, the people she socialised with and whom she observed closely. She reveals the little preoccupations and concerns of the ladies and the gentlemen and the young women in those circles, and she leads us to laugh at them. Sometimes the goading is gentle and sometimes it’s savage. And every novel tells a gripping story, full of tension, with mysteries where we are kept waiting for their final resolution, when everything falls into place – very much like the best detective novels of our time.

As with Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens, the other main English humourists,  her characters are highly memorable. We all know Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy, Emma Woodhouse and Mr Knightly, and poor little Catherine Morland. And on another level, the immortal comic characters led by Mrs Bennett and including Sir Walter Elliot, Mr Collins, Mrs Elton and Mr Woodhouse, among many others.

It is difficult to pin down what it is that Jane Austen does with language to create that combination of humour and penetrating insight. It has something to do with the way she constructs sentences – all perfectly balanced and often with a sting in the tail, and a style of narration in which the variety of points of view of the different characters tell the story. It is perhaps that latter characteristic that makes her such a modern writer – indeed, a postmodern writer – as her stories are usually told with her pretending to be the narrator, but she is not, and we fall into the trap of taking her narrator seriously. With that narrative style she is able to reveal and ridicule the manners of her society.

Her novels always have a young woman at their centre – a young woman with romantic dreams and hopes about meeting and marrying her perfect man. The heroine always does, although only after a  series of ups and downs, near misses and multiple misunderstandings.

On the surface, the novels resemble modern romantic boy-meets-girl fiction or ‘chicklit.’ Jane Austen uses that plot but her exploration of people, their class and their community while doing so goes very far beyond the novels that are read for their romantic story alone.

We have an image of Jane Austen as a spinster who lived quietly with her mother and sister and wrote her novels in semi-secrecy, hiding her pages away if she heard anyone approaching while she was writing. Most of what we know about her was written by family members after her death and so we know only the sweet, quiet, ‘Aunt Jane.’ Someone with her intelligence and sharpness must have been much more than that.

She was the daughter of George Austen, the vicar of the Anglican parish of Steventon in Hampshire. She had six brothers and one sister, Cassandra, to whom she was very close. The family did not have enough money to send her to school so she was educated at home, where she read a great deal, directed by her father and brothers Henry and James. She also experimented with writing little stories from early childhood and one can still read her juvenilia, which has been collected by various editors.

Jane Austen died on 18 th July 1817 at the age of 41. We do not have an accurate diagnosis of the cause of her death but medical researchers think it may have been the rare disease, Addison’s disease of the suprarenal glands.

Read more about England’s top writers >> Read biographies of the 30 greatest writers ever >>

Interested in Jane Austen? If so you can get some additional free information by visiting our friends over at PoemAnalysis to read their analysis of Jane Austen’s poetic works .

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i m inspired by the words written about her,each line stays alive in my heart,really speaking i have not yet read her novels but in future i will

I really wonder about her intelligence. I also want to read her novels.

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1.12.1: Jane Austen Biography

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In her novels, Jane Austen fashions the quintessential picture of Regency England, the period from 1811–1820 in which Prince George served as Prince Regent to his father King George III. Bouts of insanity, now believed to have been caused by an illness and made worse by physicians and virtual imprisonment, made George III incapable of ruling, leading to the regency of his son and heir apparent, George, later to become King George IV on his father’s death. This era, dominated by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Industrial Revolution, juxtaposed world-changing political events and technological innovations with the ostentatious, consciously fashionable world of the Prince Regent and the aristocracy bound by strict rules of social behavior. The aristocracy viewed manners, living according to society’s strictures, as indicative of belonging to the coterie in a time when being ostracized by society was considered a fate worse than death. The title of Jane Austen’s first published novel,  Sense and Sensibility , suggests an age influenced by 18th-century rationalism and 19th-century Romanticism.

Jane Austen  spent her childhood in the village of Steventon, where her father was the rector and her family active in village social life. The seventh of eight children, Jane was particularly close to her only sister Cassandra throughout her life. Although she began writing in childhood, her first novel was not published until 1811. Austen apparently fell in love with a young man, Tom LeFroy, who visited the neighborhood for a time, but whose family sent for him to return home to Ireland when they became aware of his interest in Austen, the daughter of a poor, low-ranking clergyman. Her sister Cassandra was engaged to a man who died while on business in the Caribbean, and neither sister ever married.

Jane Austen’s home in Chawton.

After her father’s retirement, Austen moved with her family to Bath, a setting used in her novels. When her father died, the Austen sisters and their mother were financially dependent on Austen’s brothers. They lived for a time in Southampton with her brother Frank, a naval officer, and his wife and spent a good bit of their time traveling from relative to relative, a situation not uncommon for widows and spinsters in the early 19th century. Finally another brother, Edward, offered his mother and sisters the use of a house on his estate in  Chawton . While living here Austen published four novels:

• Sense and Sensibility  1811
• Pride and Prejudice  1813
• Mansfield Park  1814
• Emma  1816

Two novels were published posthumously:

• Northanger Abbey  1818
• Persuasion  1818

When Austen’s health began to fail, Cassandra moved with her to nearby Winchester, a larger city where medical help would be available. Austen died soon after the move and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

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Jane Austen

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View a video mini-lecture about Jane Austen.

• The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen .  Project Gutenberg .
• Emma .  Project Gutenberg .
• Mansfield Park .  Project Gutenberg .
• Northanger Abbey .  Project Gutenberg .
• Penn State’s Electronic Classics Series Jane Austen Page .
• Persuasion .  Project Gutenberg .
• Pride and Prejudice .  Project Gutenberg .
• Sense and Sensibility .  Project Gutenberg .

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen’s works are  novels of manners , novels that portray and assess the values, customs, and behavior of a particular social stratum at a specific time in history. Indeed, one of the typical criticisms of Austen’s work is that her focus is an especially small segment of Regency society, the lower rung of landed gentry to which her own family belonged.

An early version of  Pride and Prejudice  was titled  First Impressions , referring to the first impressions Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy have of each other. Although the same concept applies in the published title, the first impressions are named and set the tone for the novel.

The Characters

Although the Bennets, on the surface, seem ruled by the mores of their society, the story proves that most of the family ill fit the expectations society would have for them. Mr. Bennet cares too little for society and too much for scholarly pursuits, preferring to simply withdraw from the societal pressures that are his wife’s obsession. Although he is an immensely likable character, he lacks the leadership that might have averted some the family’s difficulties. Mrs. Bennet, on the other hand, is so concerned with appearances and making what society would deem appropriate arrangements for her daughters’ futures that she becomes almost a caricature of a society mother. Yet she apparently is much more aware of the reality of the family’s financial situation than Mr. Bennet.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh shares Mrs. Bennet’s esteem for society’s rules, but their characters are quite different, Lady Catherine a stereotype of the society matron and Mrs. Bennet of the foolish, pushy woman unable to see her own inappropriate behavior. Elizabeth and Lydia, too, could be seen as similar in their disregard for society’s conventions and yet with opposite results. Even Wickham cannot be seen as a totally evil character as his childhood circumstances may give him a sympathetic slant, especially to modern readers.

Key Takeaways

• Jane Austen’s  Pride and Prejudice  is a novel of manners focused on the life of lower ranking gentry in a small English village.
• Pride and Prejudice  portrays characters caught between the expectations of their society and their personal desires.
• Some characters in  Pride and Prejudice  appear to deal with realistic dilemmas while others seems to be stereotypes of Regency society; none, however, are one dimensional as all characters realistically possess virtues and flaws.
• How would the women of the Bennet family fit into Mary Wollstonecraft’s description of women in the late 18th, early 19th centuries?
• What expectations of society color the initial relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy? Do these expectations become more or less important as their relationship progresses? Explain how the title applies to their relationship at the beginning and throughout the novel.
• Compare and contrast the match of Jane and Bingley and that of Elizabeth and Darcy. Is one match more appropriate than the other? Why or why not?
• Elizabeth and Lydia both, in different ways, flaunt the expectations of society in their behavior and make marriages that society would deem inappropriate, yet readers (and most of the other characters) thoroughly approve of one and disapprove of the other. Why?
• How would you describe Elizabeth’s reaction to and feelings about Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins?
• Analyze each of the major characters in the novel, making a list of assets and flaws.
• How accurate would you consider Austen’s portrayal of this segment of society?
• What circumstances in Jane Austen’s life might be seen as parallel with life in the novel?

General Information and Biography

• Biography: Life (1775–1817) and Family .  A Celebration of Women Writers . Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Editor.
• Jane Austen . Harold Child. rpt. from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume XII. The Romantic Revival.  Bartleby.com .
• Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts . University of Oxford and King’s College London. digital images of Austen’s manuscripts
• Jane Austen’s House Museum .
• Lady Susan .  Project Gutenberg .
• Jane Austen’s Bath . Literary Landscapes. British Library.
• Jane Austen’s Early Works . Virtual Books. British Library.
• Jane Austen . Dr. Carol Lowe, McLennan Community College.

Jane Austen: a guide to her life, books and death – plus 8 fascinating facts

Jane Austen (1775–1817) is one of the most recognised names in English literature. Her six major novels – Pride and Prejudice ; Sense and Sensibility ; Persuasion ; Mansfield Park ; Northanger Abbey and Emma – are considered classics today, renowned for their portrayal of English middle-class life in the early 19th century

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How much do you know about the life of Jane Austen? Writing for HistoryExtra , Helen Amy shares eight lesser-known facts about the famous novelist, and reveals how Jane came close to finding her own 'Mr Darcy'...

Jane Austen, a parson's daughter who grew up in quiet rural Hampshire in the 18th century, is one of England's most acclaimed novelists. She originally started writing to amuse herself and to entertain her family, who enjoyed reading aloud to each other. Although Jane’s books sold steadily during her lifetime, it was not until the Victorian period that she was recognised as a great author. By the 20th century her reputation had reached cult status and today a thriving commercial industry has grown out of her fame – a fact that would probably have astonished and amused Jane.

Who was Jane Austen?

But did you know…

Jane Austen’s life was saved by her cousin

In 1783 Jane’s parents, the Revd George Austen and his wife Cassandra, decided to send Jane’s sister, also called Cassandra, to Oxford with her cousin Jane Cooper, to be tutored by a Mrs Ann Cawley. This was probably to reduce Mrs Austen’s workload, for as well as caring for five boys of her own she had to look after several boys who lived at the rectory while being tutored by her husband.

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Jane, then aged seven, was devoted to her sister and would not be separated from her, so she went to Oxford as well. A few months later Mrs Cawley moved house to Southampton, taking the young girls with her. While there Cassandra and Jane became very ill with what was then called “putrid sore throat” – probably diphtheria [a potentially fatal contagious bacterial infection that mainly affects the nose and throat].

Jane was so ill that she nearly died, but Mrs Cawley, for some inexplicable reason, made no attempt to alert her parents. The young Jane Cooper took it upon herself to write and inform her aunt that Jane’s life was in danger. Without delay Mrs Austen and her sister Mrs Cooper set off for Southampton to rescue their daughters, taking with them a herbal remedy that would supposedly cure the infection.

The Austen sisters recovered under their mother’s care at home but tragically Mrs Cooper caught the infection and died soon afterwards at her home in Bath. The three girls never returned to Mrs Cawley.

Without her cousin’s timely intervention Jane Austen would almost certainly have died and the world would have been deprived of her outstanding talent.

• Listen | Historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsley shares her thoughts on Jane Austen

Jane Austen had a little-known brother

The first biography of Jane Austen, which was written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in 1869, gives the impression that she had only five brothers: James, Edward, Henry, Frank and Charles. There were, however, six sons in the Austen family – George was the second child of Revd Austen and his wife. He was also largely omitted from family memoirs.

George, who was born in 1766, suffered from epilepsy and learning difficulties and was probably deaf too. For this reason he did not live with his family – he was instead looked after by a family who lived in the village of Monk Sherborne, not far from Steventon Rectory where Jane was born and where she grew up.

The Austens made financial provision for George and visited him regularly, but he was not truly part of their lives. Apart from a few early letters that mention George and reveal his parents’ concern for him, he was not mentioned in later correspondence or in any of Jane’s letters.

The Austens clearly cared about George and they perhaps felt that he would better receive the attention he needed living quietly with another family than in the overcrowded rectory, which was also home to several of Revd Austen’s pupils.

George died at Monk Sherborne on 17 January 1838 at the age of 71. He lies in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of All Saints Church.

• What did Jane Austen really look like?

Jane Austen was partial to a Bath bun

Jane became fond of Bath buns (or ‘bunns’) while staying, and later living, in Bath. These large, rich cakes, which were similar to French brioche bread, were served warm and soaked in butter. The Austen family ate theirs for breakfast (traditionally 10am in the Georgian period), with tea or coffee. Some bakeries, including the famous Sally Lunn’s Bakery in North Parade, delivered these buns to their customers warmed and ready to eat.

• Flummery and Bath Olivers: how to make 5 different foods from Jane Austen's England

Jane, who seems to have had a sweet tooth, also liked sponge cake – in a letter to her sister in June 1808 she wrote: “You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me”.

There are many references to food and meals in Jane’s letters. She clearly enjoyed her food but she also took an interest in it because she helped her mother and sister to run the Austen household on a tight budget. Jane noted the cost of food items, which rose and fell during the years that England was at war with France, and she collected recipes for the servants to try.

Jane had a seaside romance

All her heroines fell in love with and married their perfect man, but Jane Austen was not so lucky herself – she received only one known offer of marriage. This unexpected proposal came from Harris Bigg Wither, the brother of her friends Elizabeth, Catherine and Alethea, who was heir to a considerable estate. At first Jane accepted this tempting offer but soon changed her mind because she knew she would not be happy if she married a man she did not love.

Many years after Jane’s death her sister, Cassandra, revealed that Jane had enjoyed a brief holiday romance while staying in Devon in the summer of 1802. The identity of the man concerned is not known, but it is believed that he was a clergyman. The girls’ nephew James Edward wrote that Cassandra thought this man “worthy to possess and likely to win her sister’s love”.

• Why didn't Jane Austen marry?

When they parted he expressed his intention to see Jane again, and Cassandra was in no doubt that he intended to propose to her. Sadly, though, they did not meet again because the unidentified man died suddenly not long afterwards, and Jane remained unmarried for the rest of her life.

If Jane had married the man she met in Devon and become a mother, the demands on her time would probably have made it very difficult for her to continue writing, meaning her last three novels might never have been written.

When did Jane first start writing?

Jane austen was renowned for her manual dexterity.

According to her nephew, Jane Austen was “successful in everything she attempted with her fingers”. All girls of her class were taught to sew by their mothers, and Jane’s needlework was exquisite. Jane, who was usually very modest, was proud of her skill with the sewing needle. In a letter to her sister written in September 1796 from her brother’s home, Jane wrote: “We are very busy making Edward’s shirts and I am proud to say that I am the neatest worker of the party”.

Jane was particularly good at folding and sealing letters, which was a useful skill in the days before ready-made envelopes. Her nephew recorded that “her paper was sure to take the right folds, her sealing wax to drop into the right place”.

• Read more | Jane Austen’s tips for “health and happiness”

Much to the delight of her nephews and nieces, Jane excelled at the game bilbocatch. A bilbocatch comprised a wooden handle with a pierced ball attached by a string. The player tossed up the ball and tried to catch it in a cup on the top of the handle. She was known to have caught the ball more than 100 times in succession, until her arm ached. When she needed to rest her eyes after reading or writing for long periods, she often played bilbocatch; how many times might she have caught the ball during the writing of the 55 chapters of Emma (1815), her longest novel?

Jane Austen’s bilbocatch can today be seen at the Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire.

Jane Austen thought of her novels as children

In letters to her sister, Jane described Pride and Prejudice (1813) as her “darling child” and wrote “I am never too busy to think of S & S ( Sense and Sensibility ). I can no more forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child”.

This is an interesting analogy because, like pregnancy and childbirth, the creation of her novels was a long and laborious process. Pride and Prejudice , for example, was a long time in the making – she started the first draft in October 1796 but the book wasn’t published until January 1813. The (unread) manuscript was rejected by the first publisher to whom it was sent.

In regarding her novels as her children Jane may also have been acknowledging that if she had followed the traditional path of women of her class and become a wife and mother she would probably not have written them.

Her letters contain no indication that she regretted not having children but, if she did, at least she had the compensation of her many nephews and nieces, to whom she was a devoted and much-loved aunt.

• Read more | Jane Austen’s fiction: an accurate portrayal of life in Georgian England?

Emma was dedicated to the Prince Regent, even though Jane Austen hated him

Jane once recorded in a letter that she hated the Prince Regent because of the unkind way he was said to treat his estranged wife, Caroline, such as restricting her access to their daughter. So why did she dedicate Emma to him?

In the autumn of 1815 Jane nursed her brother Henry when he was dangerously ill. One of the doctors who attended him at his home in London was the Prince Regent’s physician. When he realised that his patient’s sister was the author of Pride and Prejudice the physician informed her that the prince was a great admirer of her novels and kept a set in every one of his residences. Much to Jane’s dismay the physician then informed the prince that she was in London, and the prince instructed his librarian, James Clarke, to invite her to Carlton House, his London home, to show her the library and his other apartments.

During her visit Mr Clarke told Jane that he had been instructed by the Prince Regent to say that she was at liberty to dedicate any forthcoming novels to him. At first Jane was not inclined to do so, until she was advised, probably by her brother Henry, to regard the invitation as a command. Reluctantly, therefore, Jane asked her publisher to dedicate Emma , then being prepared for publication, to him.

How did Jane Austen die?

There is no mention on jane austen’s gravestone that she was an author.

Jane is today known as such a famous author that she is to feature on the next £10 note, but there is no indication at all on her gravestone in Winchester Cathedral that she was a writer. Her grieving family did not consider it worth recording on the stone, and Jane was buried in the cathedral only because she died nearby and it is believed that her clergyman brother obtained special permission from the Dean.

Jane’s reputation grew slowly after her death at the age of 41. Her nephew, in his biography, wrote: “Her reward was not to be the quick return of the cornfield, but the slow growth of the tree which is to endure to another generation”.

Even in the middle of the 19th century, when Jane’s fame and popularity as an author were increasing rapidly, one of the vergers of Winchester Cathedral was mystified by the large number of people seeking out her grave. “Was there anything special about this lady?” he asked.

A brass memorial tablet, which mentions Jane’s writing, was placed on the wall near her grave in 1872. It was purchased with the profits of her nephew’s biography of her, which he wrote to satisfy the growing curiosity about her life and work. There was such a demand for it that a second, extended, edition was soon published. This was to be the first of countless biographies and books about one of England’s best-loved novelists.

Helen Amy is the author of The Jane Austen Files: A Complete Anthology of Letters & Family Recollections (Amberley Publishing, 2015) and Jane Austen: In Her Own Words and The Words of Those Who Knew Her (Amberley Publishing, 2014)

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in March 2016

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Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on the 16th of December in 1775, in Stevenson, Hampshire, England. She was an intelligent daughter of George Austen, a famous cleric at one of the Anglican parishes. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was a wealthy lady. Jane’s grandfather was an Oxford-educated cleric. The children grew up in an environment that provided them with room for creative thinking and learning. Young Jane, being close to her father, learned many things from him. Moreover, George’s extensive library helped her polish her reading and analytical skills. Unfortunately, her father died in 1805, and her mother passed away in 1827.

Jane Austen, a great literary figure, belonged to a well-educated and influential family. She began to read and write at a very young age. Sharing a close relationship with her father, she learned the basic skills at home. To get a formal education, Jane, along with her sister, was sent to Oxford in 1783 to be educated by Miss Ann Cowley, where they stayed for a short time. Facing an acute illness, both siblings returned home and stayed with the family. Later, in 1875, Jane and her sister were sent to Reading Abbey Girls School , where they were exposed to needlework, dancing, French, music, and drama . Unfortunately, due to the financial strains, the sisters returned home in 1876. After her return, her father and brothers guided her in the educational field. The private theatre had always been an essential part for Austen as her friends and family staged a series of plays, including The Rivals by Richard Sheridan . Inspired with the literary efforts of her family and friends, she started writing herself at the age of eleven.

Jane led a successful life, and at the age of forty-one, her health began to decline. Despite facing illness, she made efforts to continue to write and edited older works as well as started a new piece called The Brothers, which published after her death under the title of Senditon. The world lost this precious gem on the 18 th of July in 1877 in Winchester, England.

Some Important Facts of Her Life

• Her transformation from little-known to internationally acclaimed writers started in the 1920s when critics reevaluated her literary pieces.
• She enjoyed unprecedented fame in her life, but she never got married.
• The popularity of her works speaks in many TV adaptations and films of Mansfield Park, Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Pride, and Prejudice

Writing Career

Jane Austen, a towering figure of the seventeenth century, started writing literary pieces at a very young. With the compositions of plays and short stories , she laid the foundation of her long literary career. At first, she wrote pieces for her own and her family’s amusements with the subjects of anarchic fantasies of female power or feminism and illicit behavior. Later, in 1970, she started writing novels and came up with Love and Friendship followed by The History of England, presenting the historical and romantic fiction . Using the framework of letter writing in these fictions, she unveiled her wit and disliked for romantic hysteria and sensibility, which remained evident in her other writings, too. Later, she produced an epistolary story , Lady Susan , presenting the life of a female who manipulates others using her sexuality and intelligence. Marked with the techniques of letter writing, her other major work, Elinor and Marianne, which was later drafted as Sense and Sensibility, appeared in 1811. She produced many masterpieces throughout her life including, Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park, and Emma.

Jane Austen stands among the most influential figures of world literature. With the help of her unique style , she beautifully portrayed her ideas in her literary pieces. Her distinctive literary style relies mainly on a blend of parody , free indirect speech, irony , and presentation of literary realism . Jane used burlesque and parody in her writings to critique the portrayal of women in the 18 th century. Her pieces are far from the world of imagination as she focused on presenting the ordinary people realistically. Moreover, her ironic style presents a keen insight into the English culture. Concerning characterization , she focused on the conversation allow the characters to develop themselves. The recurring themes in most of her literary pieces are cultural, identity, love, marriage, and pride.

Jane Austen’s Influence on Future Literature

Jane Austen, with her unique abilities, left a profound impact on global literature, and even after 200 hundred years of her demise, she continues to win love for her biting approach on diverse tangles of this passion.  Her witty ideas, along with distinct literary qualities, won applause from the audience , critics, and other fellow writers. Her impact resonates strongly inside as well as outside England. Her masterpieces provided the principles for the writers of succeeding generations. She successfully documented her ideas about marriage, power, and love in her writings that even today, writers try to imitate her unique style, considering her a beacon for writing prose .

Some Important Works of Jane Austen

• Best Novels: She was an outstanding writer, some of her best novels, which include Emma, Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park, Persuasion , and Northanger Abbey.
• Other Works: Besides novels, she also tried her hands on shorter and non-fiction too. Some of them include Plan of Novel , Juvenilia- Volume the First, Juvenilia- V0lume the Second, Juvenilia- Volume the Third, Letters, and Poems .

Famous Quotes

• “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.” ( Pride and Prejudice )
• “There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.” ( Persuasion )
• A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” ( Northanger Abbey)
• Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” ( Mansfield Park)

Related posts:

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• Jane Eyre Characters
• Jane Eyre Quotes
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• Pride and Prejudice Characters
• Pride and Prejudice Quotes
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Jane Austen: 6 Interesting Facts About the Beloved English Author

Although she never married, Jane Austen did become engaged — for one night

Austen changed her mind overnight, however, and refused the proposal the next morning. The awkwardness of the situation caused her to leave Manydown immediately. We can only speculate what Austen’s thoughts were about the proposal. Perhaps she initially accepted because the marriage would have given her financial security and the means to assist her parents and sister. And, perhaps she changed her mind because she believed — as she later wrote to a niece considering a marriage of convenience — that “nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love.” Fortunately for her readers, she chose to remain single and was able to focus on writing rather than running a household and raising children.

Austen continued to imagine how the lives of her characters evolved long after she finished a novel

In A Memoir of Jane Austen , her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote, “She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people.” For example, Anne Steele, Lucy’s silly and vulgar sister in Sense and Sensibility , did not catch Dr. Davies after all. And, after the close of Pride and Prejudice , Kitty Bennet eventually married a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary ended up with a clerk who worked for her Uncle Philips. Some of the most interesting revelations, however, related to Emma . Mr. Woodhouse not only survived Emma’s marriage to Mr. Knightley but also kept his daughter and son-in-law living at Hartfield for two years. Deirdre Le Faye has also noted in Jane Austen: A Family Record that "According to a less well-known tradition, the delicate Jane Fairfax lived only another nine or ten years after her marriage to Frank Churchill."

The surnames of several Austen characters can be found within the prominent and wealthy Wentworth family of Yorkshire — which also intersects with Austen’s own family tree

Her mother, Cassandra Austen, née Leigh, was the great-grandniece of the first Duke of Chandos (1673-1744) and Cassandra Willoughby. Her mother was also connected to Thomas, Second Baron Leigh of Stoneleigh (1652-1710), who was married twice: first to Eleanor Watson and then to Anne Wentworth, daughter of the first Earl of Strafford.

As Donald Greene, former English literature specialist at the University of Southern California, pointed out, “When the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot says of the hero of Persuasion , ‘Mr. Wentworth was nobody…quite unconnected, nothing to do with the Strafford family. One wonders how the names of many of our nobility become so common,’ it adds to the piquancy of the satire that Austen’s family was in fact ‘connected’ with the real-life Strafford Wentworths.”

Austen also used names from the Wentworth genealogy tree while writing Pride and Prejudice . Her hero Mr. Darcy, the nephew of an earl, bears the names of two wealthy and powerful branches of the Wentworth family: Fitzwilliam (as in the Earls Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse, in Yorkshire) and D’Arcy.

Professor Janine Barchas of the University of Texas at Austin and author of Matters of Fact in Jane Austen has also noted that Austen used yet another Wentworth family name in the novel Emma : “In the 13th century, a Robert Wentworth married a rich heiress by the name of Emma Wodehouse.”

Austen took her writing very seriously

Austen began writing stories, plays and poetry when she was 12 years old. Most of her “Juvenilia,” as the material she wrote in her youth is called, was in the comic vein. She wrote a parody of textbook histories, " The History of England …by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian," when she was 16 years old. She also wrote parodies of the romantic novels of “sensibility” that were popular in her day. Austen’s family members read aloud and performed plays for each other, and she learned about writing from these activities and the comments her family made about her own efforts. By the age of 23, Austen had written first drafts of the novels that later became Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey .

From the letters she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, and other family members, one can see that Austen was proud of her writing. She enjoyed discussing her latest work, sharing news about a novel’s progress at the printer, and offering advice on the craft of writing to other aspiring authors in the family. She also carefully tracked comments made by family members and friends about Mansfield Park and Emma and referred to Pride and Prejudice as her “own darling child.” Austen continued writing throughout her adult life until just before she died in July of 1817.

Austen’s life was not limited to a sheltered country existence

On the surface, her life seems to have been quiet and secluded; she was born in a small country village and lived there for 25 years. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869, which reinforced the image that she was a demure, quiet maiden aunt in the best Victorian tradition. However, she led a very active life with travel and social contacts of many types. Through her family and friends, she learned a great deal about the world around her.

Austen frequently stayed with her brother Henry in London, where she regularly attended plays and art exhibits. Her brother Edward was adopted by wealthy cousins, eventually inheriting their estates in Kent (Godmersham) and Hampshire (Chawton) and taking their name (Knight). Over a period of 15 years, Austen visited Edward’s Godmersham estate for months at a time, mixing with his fashionable and wealthy friends and enjoying the privileged life of the landed gentry. These experiences are reflected in all of her fiction.

Austen was also well aware of the horrors of the French Revolution and the effect of the Napoleonic Wars on the people and the economy of Britain. Her cousin’s husband was guillotined during the French Revolution, and her brothers Francis (Frank) and Charles were officers in the Royal Navy, serving on ships around the world during the conflict. Sir Francis William Austen (one year older than Austen) advanced through the ranks and was eventually knighted. He was promoted to Admiral of Fleet in 1860. Rear Admiral Charles John Austen (four years younger than Austen) had his own command and was serving in North America by 1810. From correspondence and frequent visits with these two brothers and their families, she learned much about the Navy, which she incorporated into Mansfield Park and Persuasion .

Men read Austen, too

While Austen’s novels are sometimes viewed as “chick-lit” romances, her believable characters, realistic plots, moral themes, comedy, and dry wit have long appealed to readers of any gender.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admitted to reading Austen’s novels, and Winston Churchill credited her with helping him win World War II. Rudyard Kipling read Austen aloud to his wife and daughter each evening in an effort to raise their spirits after his son, fighting in WWI, was reported missing and believed dead. Even after the war, Kipling returned to Austen with “The Janeites,” a short story about a group of British artillery soldiers in WWI who bonded through their shared appreciation of the novels of Austen. And one of her male contemporaries, Sir Walter Scott, praised her writing in his journal: “Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice . That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with.”

About The Jane Austen Society of North America:

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the study, appreciation and understanding of Austen’s works, life, and genius.

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Biography Online

Jane Austen Biography

Early Life of Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on 16th December 1775. She was the seventh daughter of an eight child family. Her father, George Austen, was a vicar and lived on a reasonable income of £600 a year. However, although they were middle class, they were not rich; her father would have been unable to give much to help her daughters get married. Jane was brought up with her five brothers and her elder sister Cassandra. (another brother, Edward, was adopted by a rich, childless couple and went to live with them). Jane was close to her siblings, especially Cassandra, to whom she was devoted. The two sisters shared a long correspondence throughout her life; much of what we know about Jane comes from these letters, although, unfortunately, Cassandra burnt a number of these on Jane’s death.

Jane was educated at Oxford and later a boarding school in Reading. In the early 1800s, two of Jane’s brother’s joined the navy leaving to fight in the Napoleonic wars; they would go on to become admirals. Her naval connections can be seen in novels like Mansfield Park. After the death of her father in 1805, Jane, with her mother and sister returned to Hampshire. In 1809, her brother Edward, who had been brought up by the Knights, invited the family to the estate he had inherited at Chawton. It was in the country house of Chawton, that Jane was able to produce some of her greatest novels.

Novels of Jane Austen

Jane Austen – sketch by her sister Cassandra

Jane Austen’s novels are a reflection of her outlook on life. She spent most of her life insulated from certain sections of society. Her close friends were mainly her family and those of similar social standing. It is not surprising then that her novels focused on two or three families of the middle or upper classes. Most of her novels were also based on the idyll of rural country houses that Jane was so fond of.

Her novels also focus on the issue of gaining a suitable marriage. In the Nineteenth Century, marriage was a big issue facing women and men; often financial considerations were paramount in deciding marriages. As an author, Jane satirised these financial motivations, for example, in Pride and Prejudice the mother is ridiculed for her ambitions to marry her daughters for maximum financial remuneration. Jane, herself remained single throughout her life. Apart from brief flirtations, Jane remained single and appeared to have little interest in getting married. (unlike the characters of her novels)

The strength of Jane’s novels was her ability to gain penetrating insights into the character and nature of human relationships, from even a fairly limited range of environments and characters. In particular, she helped to redefine the role and aspirations of middle-class women like herself. Through providing a witty satire of social conventions, she helped to liberate contemporary ideas of what women could strive for.

During her lifetime the novels were reasonably popular. One of her strongest supporters was Walter Scott. He said of her novels:

“ That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. “

In the early nineteenth-century, women were not allowed to sign contracts and publishing a book had to be done by a male relative.  Through her brother, her publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Jane’s novels and on release, they sold well. At the time, the novel reading public was quite small, due to the cost of paper. The initial print run of her first novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (1811) was just 750. However, as they sold out, the book was reprinted and later books had bigger print runs. Jane earned a modest income from her book royalties but achieved little fame as the books were published anonymously.

In 1815, she learnt that the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) requested one novel to be dedicated to him. Emma is therefore dedicated to the King, even though Jane did not like the reports of his womanising and licentious behaviour.

Death of Jane Austen

Just a few years after achieving modest success as a published author, Jane began feeling unwell and, despite trying to brush it off and continue writing, her condition deteriorated rapidly. Jane died in 1816, aged only 41. She died of Addison’s disease, a disorder of the adrenal glands. She was buried at Winchester Cathedral.

There are two museums dedicated to Jane Austen.

• The Jane Austen Centre in Bath and
• The Jane Austen’s House Museum, located in Chawton Cottage, in Hampshire, where she lived from 1809 –1816

In 2005, Pride and Prejudice was voted best British novel of all time in a BBC poll.

Jane Austen Novels

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
• Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
• Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)

Unfinished fiction

• The Watsons (1804)
• Sanditon (1817)

Jane was also voted as one of the Top 100 greatest Britons.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “ Biography of Jane Austen ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , Published 1 Feb 2007. Last updated 13 February 2018.

Jane Austen – four novels

• Jane Austen – four novels at Amazon

Related pages

Jane Austen

• The Jane Austen Collection at Amazon
•  Sense and Sensibility (published 1811)
•  Pride and Prejudice (1813)
•  Mansfield Park (1814)
•  Emma (1816)
•  Persuasion (1818) posthumous
•  Northanger Abbey (1818) posthumous

External Links

• Picture from Wikipedia – Jane Austen
• Jane Austen – Pemberley.com
• Jane Austen at BBC

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was a major English novelist and an iconic figure of the world literature. She is best known for portraying the romantic lives of the middle class English people. Her excellence in writing social commentary and realistic situations earned her the privilege of being the most widely read authors of English literature. Unfortunately, Austen’s most extraordinary works Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma did not gain much praise during her lifetime, however, they are known as historical milestones and classics in literature today.

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 in Steventon Hampshire, England. She was the 7th child of 8. Jane was closest to her sister Cassandra who also remained her best friend for life. Their parents encouraged learning, writing and acting in their children which provided Jane with the inspirations and context for her future endeavors. Jane was a passionate writer and her earliest known writings have been found to be dated around 1787. She began her first novel, Sense and Sensibility in 1795 and completed her masterpiece Pride and Prejudice in 1797. Northanger Abbey, her next novel was finished in 1799.

After her father’s death in 1805, Jane moved to Bath with her family. Her brother, Henry helped her find publishers and her need for money resulted in Jane publishing Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. The novels were published anonymously and they received excellent reviews from both the Critical Review and the Quarterly Review. Austen was an established novelist by the time she published Mansfield Park in 1814. Her new and fresh style of writing was welcomed by readers and her upcoming novels were awaited. The readers loved her intelligent character sketching and homely settings. Emma, another beautifully written story appeared as a novel in 1815.

Although her health started to deteriorate in early 1816, Austen remained a busy writer even towards the end of her life. She worked on producing Persuasion until 1816 and began writing Sanditon in 1817. However, she was unable to complete it due to health issues which were later found to be Addison’s disease. When her condition worsened, Austen wrote her will in April 1817. She was taken to Winchester for treatment where she died in the early hours of July 18 in her sister’s arms at the age of 41. Jane Austen’s grave is in Winchester Cathedral. Austen’s identity as an author was revealed only after her death when her sister Cassandra and brother Henry arranged the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in which Henry included a note introducing his sister, Jane Austen as the author. Like her sister, Jane never married. However, her novels serve as a window to her personal life.

The details and delicacy of relationships written in her novels reveal actual feelings and romantic aspirations of the writer who like her characters must have been through the pleasures and disappointments of love.

Jane Austen’s timeless stories, their beautiful construction and modernity were the turning point of the transition of English literature from 18th century neo-classicism to 19th century romanticism.

Buy Books by Jane Austen

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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 Biography

Born: December 16, 1775 Steventon, England Died: July 18, 1817 Winchester, England English author, novelist, and writer

The English writer Jane Austen was one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. In her intense concentration on the thoughts and feelings of a limited number of characters, Jane Austen created as profound an understanding and as precise a vision of the potential of the human spirit as the art of fiction has ever achieved. Although her novels received favorable reviews, she was not celebrated as an author during her lifetime.

Family, education, and a love for writing

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon, in the south of England, where her father served as a rector (preacher) for the rural community. She was the seventh of eight children in an affectionate and high-spirited family. As one of only two girls, Jane was very attached to her sister throughout her life. Because of the ignorance of the day, Jane's education was inadequate by today's standards. This coupled with Mr. Austen's meager salary kept Jane's formal training to a minimum. To supplement his income as a rector, Mr. Austen tutored young men. It is believed that Jane may have picked up Latin from staying close to home and listening in on these lessons. At the age of six she was writing verses. A two-year stay at a small boarding school trained Jane in needlework, dancing, French, drawing, and spelling, all training geared to produce marriageable young women. It was this social atmosphere and feminine identity that Jane so skillfully satirized (mocked) in her many works of fiction. She never married herself, but did receive at least one proposal and led an active and happy life, unmarked by dramatic incident and surrounded by her family.

Austen began writing as a young girl and by the age of fourteen had completed Love and Friendship. This early work, an amusing parody (imitation) of the overdramatic novels popular at that time, shows clear signs of her talent for humorous and satirical writing. Three volumes of her collected young writings were published more than a hundred years after her death.

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen's first major novel was Sense and Sensibility, whose main characters are two sisters. The first draft was written in 1795 and was titled Elinor and Marianne. In 1797 Austen rewrote the novel and titled it Sense and Sensibility. After years of polishing, it was finally published in 1811.

As the original and final titles indicate, the novel contrasts the temperaments of the two sisters. Elinor governs her life by sense or reasonableness, while Marianne is ruled by sensibility or feeling. Although the plot favors the value of reason over that of emotion, the greatest emphasis is placed on the moral principles of human affairs and on the need for enlarged thought and feeling in response to it.

Pride and Prejudice

In 1796, when Austen was twenty-one years old, she wrote the novel First Impressions. The work was rewritten and published under the title Pride and Prejudice in 1813. It is her most popular and perhaps her greatest novel. It achieves this distinction by virtue of its perfection of form, which exactly balances and expresses its human content. As in Sense and Sensibility, the descriptive terms in the title are closely associated with the two main characters.

The form of the novel is dialectical—the opposition of ethical (conforming or not conforming to standards of conduct and moral reason) principles is expressed in the relations of believable characters. The resolution of the main plot with the marriage of the two opposites represents a reconciliation of conflicting moral extremes. The value of pride is affirmed when humanized by the wife's warm personality, and the value of prejudice is affirmed when associated with the husband's standards of traditional honor.

During 1797–1798 Austen wrote Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously (after death). It is a fine satirical novel, making sport of the popular Gothic novel of terror, but it does not rank among her major works. In the following years she wrote The Watsons (1803 or later), which is a fragment of a novel similar in mood to her later Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan (1804 or later), a short novel in letters.

Mansfield Park

In 1811 Jane Austen began Mansfield Park, which was published in 1814. It is her most severe exercise in moral analysis and presents a conservative view of ethics, politics, and religion.

The novel traces the career of a Cinderella-like heroine, who is brought from a poor home to Mansfield Park, the country estate of her relative. She is raised with some of the comforts of her cousins, but her social rank is maintained at a lower level. Despite their strict upbringing, the cousins become involved in marital and extramarital tangles, which bring disasters and near-disasters on the family. But the heroine's upright character guides her through her own relationships with dignity—although sometimes with a chilling disdainfulness (open disapproval)—and leads to her triumph at the close of the novel. While some readers may not like the rather priggish (following rules of proper behavior to an extreme degree) heroine, the reader nonetheless develops a sympathetic understanding of her thoughts and emotions. The reader also learns to value her at least as highly as the more attractive, but less honest, members of Mansfield Park's wealthy family and social circle.

Shortly before Mansfield Park was published, Jane Austen began a new novel, Emma, and published it in 1816. Again the heroine does engage the reader's sympathy and understanding. Emma is a girl of high intelligence and vivid imagination who is also marked by egotism and a desire to dominate the lives of others. She exercises her powers of manipulation on a number of neighbors who are not able to resist her prying. Most of Emma's attempts to control her friends, however, do not have happy effects for her or for them. But influenced by an old boyfriend who is her superior in intelligence and maturity, she realizes how misguided many of her actions are. The novel ends with the decision of a warmer and less headstrong Emma to marry him. There is much evidence to support the argument of some critics that Emma is Austen's most brilliant novel.

Persuasion, begun in 1815 and published posthumously in 1818, is Jane Austen's last complete novel and is perhaps most directly expressive of her feelings about her own life. The heroine is a woman growing older with a sense that life has passed her by. Several years earlier she had fallen in love with a suitor but was parted from him because her class-conscious family insisted she make a more appropriate match. But she still loves him, and when he again enters her life, their love deepens and ends in marriage.

Austen's satirical treatment of social pretensions and worldly motives is perhaps at its keenest in this novel, especially in her presentation of Anne's family. The predominant tone of Persuasion, however, is not satirical but romantic. It is, in the end, the most uncomplicated love story that Jane Austen ever wrote and, to some tastes, the most beautiful.

The novel Sanditon was unfinished at her death on July 8, 1817. She died in Winchester, England, where she had gone to seek medical attention, and was buried there.

For More Information

Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography. New York: Arcade Pub., 1997.

Nokes, David. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Tyler, Natalie. The Friendly Jane Austen: A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility. New York: Viking, 1999.

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Jane Austen Biography and Works

Table of Contents

Jane Austen is one of the most renowned authors in English literature, known for her witty social commentary and romantic novels set in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Born in 1775 in Hampshire, England, Austen was one of eight children in a family of modest means.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Despite her lack of formal education, she became a prolific and successful writer, publishing six novels in her lifetime. Her works continue to be celebrated for their enduring appeal, as they offer insight into the social and cultural norms of the time, as well as the complex relationships between men and women.

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. She was the second youngest of eight children born to George and Cassandra Austen. Her father was a clergyman and a rector of the local Anglican church, and her mother was from a well-connected family. As a child, Austen was close to her older sister, Cassandra, and they remained close throughout their lives.

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William Shakespeare Biography and Works

Austen received most of her education at home, where she learned to read and write and developed her love of literature. She was an avid reader from a young age and enjoyed works by authors such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Fanny Burney. She also wrote stories and plays for her family’s entertainment, and some of her earliest works survive to this day.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- In 1801, the Austen family moved to Bath, a fashionable resort town popular with the upper classes. During her time in Bath, Austen began to write more seriously and completed the first drafts of several of her novels. However, the family’s financial situation worsened after her father’s death in 1805, and they were forced to move to cheaper accommodation in the countryside.

Austen continued to write during this period, and in 1811, she published her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, under the pseudonym “A Lady.” The novel was a success, and Austen continued to publish one novel after another over the next few years. Her other works include Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1818), and Persuasion (1818).

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Despite her success as a writer, Austen remained unmarried and lived a relatively quiet life, spending most of her time with her family and close friends. She died on July 18, 1817, at the age of 41, possibly from Addison’s disease, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Sense and Sensibility (1811): Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who are forced to leave their family home after their father’s death and make a new life for themselves in a new town. The novel explores themes of love, marriage, and social class, and contrasts the characters’ differing approaches to these issues.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Pride and Prejudice (1813): Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most famous novel and tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet, a young woman from a middle-class family, and Mr. Darcy, a wealthy landowner. The novel is known for its sharp social commentary and witty dialogue, as well as its exploration of the relationships between men and women.

Mansfield Park (1814): Mansfield Park follows the story of Fanny Price, a young girl who is sent to live with her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park. The novel explores themes of social class and morality, and is known for its nuanced portrayal of the relationships between its characters.

Early Life and Education

Jane Austen was born into a family of modest means. Her father, George Austen, was a clergyman who served as the rector of Steventon, a small village in Hampshire. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was from a prominent family but had little wealth of her own. Austen was the second-youngest of six brothers and one sister, and she was particularly close to her older sister, Cassandra.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- As a child, Austen was an avid reader and showed an early talent for writing. She began writing stories and plays as a teenager and shared them with her family. Austen’s parents encouraged her writing, and her father even helped her publish one of her early works, “Love and Friendship,” when she was just 14 years old.

Despite her passion for writing, Austen’s formal education was limited. She attended boarding school for a short time but received most of her education at home, where her father taught her and her siblings. She was well-educated for a woman of her time, but she was not formally trained in the classics or other subjects that were considered essential for a gentleman.

Career and Works

Austen began writing her first novel, “Sense and Sensibility,” in 1795, when she was just 19 years old. The novel was published anonymously in 1811 and was an instant success. The story follows two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, as they navigate the complexities of love and society in 18th-century England. The novel was praised for its wit, charm, and vivid characters, and it established Austen as a major literary talent.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Austen continued to write while living at home with her family in Steventon. She wrote “Pride and Prejudice” in 1796, but the novel was not published until 1813. The novel follows the Bennet family and their attempts to find suitable husbands for their five daughters. The novel is known for its sharp social commentary and its depiction of the complexities of courtship and marriage in Regency England.

Austen’s third novel, “Mansfield Park,” was published in 1814. The novel tells the story of Fanny Price, a young woman who is sent to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at their estate in the country. The novel explores themes of social class, morality, and the power dynamics of family relationships.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Austen’s fourth novel, “Emma,” was published in 1815. The novel follows the eponymous Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who sets out to play matchmaker for her friends and family. The novel is known for its humor and its portrayal of the intricacies of social interaction in Regency England.

Austen’s fifth novel, “Northanger Abbey,” was written in 1798 but was not published until after her death in 1817. The novel is a satire of Gothic literature and follows the adventures of Catherine Morland, a young woman who becomes obsessed with the supernatural.

Jane Austen Biography and Works:- Austen’s final novel, “Persuasion,” was published posthumously in 1818. The novel tells the story of Anne Elliot, a young woman who is persuaded to break off her engagement to a young naval officer.

Jane Austen’s legacy as a writer and social commentator endures to this day, and her novels continue to be beloved by readers all over the world. Through her works, she offered a glimpse into the social norms and expectations of her time, as well as the complexities of human relationships. Austen’s keen observations of human behavior and her sharp wit have ensured her a place in the canon of English literature, and her influence can be seen in the works of countless authors who have followed in her footsteps. Her legacy is a testament to the enduring power of literature to transcend time and place and to offer insights into the human experience.

Q: Who was Jane Austen?

A: Jane Austen was an English novelist born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. She is known for her six novels, including Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma, which are considered classics of English literature.

Q: What were Jane Austen’s most famous works?

A: Jane Austen’s most famous works are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma. She also wrote three other novels: Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion.

Q: What themes did Jane Austen explore in her novels?

A: Jane Austen’s novels explore themes of social class, gender roles, marriage, and morality. Her works often satirize the conventions of the time and offer insight into the social norms and expectations of the upper classes.

Q: Did Jane Austen have a romantic life?

A: There is little concrete evidence of Jane Austen’s romantic life, and she never married. However, her letters suggest that she had several flirtations and admirers throughout her life.

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Jane Austen museum appeals to public for help deciphering brother’s memoir

Curators launch campaign after acquiring 78-page document that could hold new information about author

There may be gems about Jane Austen’s life and times buried in a memoir handwritten by her older brother – but it is proving difficult to decipher his tricky handwriting.

So museum curators at her old cottage in the Hampshire village of Chawton are asking Austen enthusiasts across the world if they can help transcribe the newly acquired 78-page document.

The head of collections, interpretation and engagement at Jane Austen’s House , Sophie Reynolds, said: “It’s really, really, rare to have new Austen family material come to light. It’s not fully known what is in there so that’s really exciting.”

As well as the unpublished handwritten biography, the museum has bought an album of watercolours and drawings Austen’s brother made during his career in the Royal Navy. Both have gone on display in an exhibition called Travels with Frank Austen – the name he was known by.

Anyone who wants to help can email the house to request a page to transcribe. Reynolds compared it to a citizen science project. “It’s genuinely useful, it’s a really valuable thing to do. Reading it is quite painstaking.”

The memoir is written in the third person and the pages towards the end of the book are particularly difficult to read as arthritis made the author’s handwriting go “spidery”.

Reynolds said: “Jane Austen left so little facts on her life. This is another piece of the puzzle that can go into the museum. Scholars will find it fascinating to pull things out. It’s about filling in some more of the details that sort of surrounded her. We can see the world a little bit as she would have done.”

Austen lived at Chawton for the last eight years of her life and wrote Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion there.

Both the manuscript biography and the watercolour album came up for auction at Bonham’s in London last June and were acquired by Chawton with funding from Friends of the National Libraries, a charity that saves the nation’s written and printed heritage.

• Jane Austen

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Jane Austen: volunteers wanted to transcribe brother's biography

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Jane Austen enthusiasts are being asked to help transcribe a handwritten manuscript biography of her brother Frances.

The unpublished text details the life, travels and navel career of Admiral Sir Francis William Austen.

The Jane Austen House Museum is calling for help transcribing the 78-page document so it can be published online.

Along with an album of paintings, it is on display at the museum to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth.

Believed to be written by Admiral Austen himself, despite being in the third person, the manuscript biography describes his life and family relations as well as observations on historical events and impressions of the countries he visited during his 79 years at sea.

Known as Frank, he went to naval college in Portsmouth at the age of 12 and rose up through the ranks.

He served against the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic sea forces, and was described by Admiral Nelson as "an excellent young man".

He rose to become Admiral of the Fleet and was knighted in 1837.

The manuscript and the album was acquired by the museum in 2023, with funding from Friends of the National Libraries.

The museum is asking for volunteers to each transcribe a section of the text of the handwritten manuscript.

The transcribed text will then be checked and compiled into a digital version to be viewed online.

The album contains 73 watercolours and drawings, predominantly of the West Indies and Canada, created by Francis and his daughter Cassandra Eliza Austen in the 1840s.

He lived with Jane Austen, her sister and mother in Southampton from 1806 to1809, and corresponded with them while away at sea.

The author used the name of his ship, HMS Elephant, in her novel Mansfield Park, writing to ask if he would object to it being mentioned.

A skilled wood turner, Francis Austen is also thought to have inspired the character Captain Harville in the novel Persuasion.

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