Jane Austen

**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. Her greatest selling book is Pride and Prejudice.

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.

## Biography

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.

### Family

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.

### Early life and education

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.

### Early writings

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 Friendship_  which was completed in 1790 and _Lesley Castle_ which was completed in 1792. In _Love and Friendship_, she laughed at popular sentimental novels. She also wrote _The History of England_, which had 13 watercolour pictures by her sister Cassandra inside it.

### Death

Jane Austen started to feel increasingly unwell during 1816, which was the year when her novel **'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.

## Related pages

- Reception history of Jane Austen

## Bibliography

- **Primary works **

- Austen, Jane. _Catharine and Other Writings_. Ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. .
- Austen, Jane. _The History of England_. Ed. David Starkey. Icon Books, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. .
- Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. _Jane Austen's Letters_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. .

- **Secondary works **

**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. .
- Honan, Park. _Jane Austen: A Life_. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. .
- Le Faye, Deirdre. _Jane Austen: A Family Record_. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. .
- Nokes, David. _Jane Austen: A Life_. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. .
- Tomalin, Claire. _Jane Austen: A Life_. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. .

**Essay collections**

- Alexander, Christine and Juliet McMaster, eds. _The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. .
- Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, eds. _The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. .
- Grey, J. David, ed. _The Jane Austen Companion_. New York: Macmillan, 1986. .
- Lynch, Deidre, ed. _Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees_. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. .
- Southam, B. C., ed. _Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1812–1870_. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. .
- Southam, B. C., ed. _Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870–1940_. Vol. 2. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. .
- Todd, Janet, ed. _Jane Austen in Context_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. .
- Watt, Ian, ed. _Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays_. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. .

**Monographs and articles**

- Armstrong, Nancy. _Desire and Domestic Fiction_. London: Oxford University Press, 1987. .
- Butler, Marilyn. _Jane Austen and the War of Ideas_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. .
- Byrne, Paula. Jane Austen and the Theatre. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. .
- Collins, Irene. _Jane Austen and the Clergy_. London: The Hambledon Press, 1994. .
- Devlin, D.D. _Jane Austen and Education_. London: Macmillan, 1975. .
- Duckworth, Alistair M. _The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. .
- Fergus, Jan. _Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel_. Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1983. .
- 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. .
- Gay, Penny. _Jane Austen and the Theatre_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. .
- 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. .
- 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. .
- Johnson, Claudia L. _Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. .
- Kirkham, Margaret. _Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction_. Brighton: Harvester, 1983. .
- 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. .
- MacDonagh, Oliver. _Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. .
- Miller, D. A. _Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style_. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. .
- 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. .
- 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. .
- Raven, James. _The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. .
- Said, Edward W. _Culture and Imperialism_. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. .
- Todd, Janet. _The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. .
- Waldron, Mary. _Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. .
- Wiltshire, John. _Recreating Jane Austen_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
- Wiltshire, John. _Jane Austen and the Body: The Picture of Health_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. .

## Other websites

**Online works'''

## Infobox (writer)

- **name**: Jane Austen
- **image**: CassandraAusten-JaneAusten(c.1810) hires.jpg
- **image size**: 225px
- **caption**: Portrait of Jane Austen, drawn by her sister Cassandra Austen, Cassandra (c. 1810)
- **birth place**: Steventon, Hampshire, Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England
- **death place**: Winchester, Hampshire, England
- **resting place**: Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, England
- **period**: 1787 to 1809–11
- **genre**: Romance novel, Romance
- **signature**: Jane Austen signature from her will.svg