Jane Austen

Jane Austen (/ˈdʒeɪn ˈɒstɪn/; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels which interpret, critique and comment upon the life of the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Her most highly praised novel during her lifetime was Pride and Prejudice, her second published novel. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security.

The author's major novels are rarely out of print today, although they were first published anonymously and brought her little fame and brief reviews during her lifetime. A significant transition in her posthumous reputation as an author occurred in 1869, fifty-two years after her death, when her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider audience. Austen's most successful novel during her lifetime was Pride and Prejudice, which went through two editions at the time. Her third published novel was Mansfield Park, which (despite being largely overlooked by reviewers) was successful during her lifetime.

All of Austen's major novels were first published between 1811 and 1818. From 1811 to 1816, with the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published author. Austen wrote two additional novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818) and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, before her death.

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Austen's writings have inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies, establishing her as a British author of international fame. Her novels have inspired films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier to more recent productions: Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Kate Beckinsale in Love & Friendship (2016).

Life

Information about Austen is "famously scarce", according to one biographer. Only some personal and family letters remain (by one estimate, only 160 of Austen's 3,000 letters are extant), and her sister Cassandra—to whom most of the letters were addressed—burned "the greater part" of them and censored those she did not destroy. Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Sir Francis Austen, Jane's brother. Most of the biographical material produced for fifty years after Austen's death was written by her relatives and reflected the family's bias in favour of "good quiet Aunt Jane"; scholars have unearthed little information since. Austen wrote during the period of British Romanticism leading to British Idealism. She admired a number of British Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Coleridge (1772–1834) and Lord Byron (1788–1824), whose influence on her novels has been studied.

Austen's parents, George (1731–1805), an Anglican rector, and his wife Cassandra (1739–1827), shared a gentry background. George was descended from wool manufacturers who had risen to the lower ranks of the landed gentry, and Cassandra was a member of the aristocratic Leigh family. They married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath. From 1765 to 1801 (for much of Jane's life), George was a rector of Anglican parishes in Steventon, Hampshire, and a nearby village. From 1773 to 1796, he supplemented his income by farming and teaching three or four boys at a time (who boarded at his home).

Austen's immediate family was large—six brothers: James (1765–1819), George (1766–1838), Edward (1768–1852), Henry Thomas (1771–1850), Francis William (Frank) (1774–1865) and Charles John (1779–1852) and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth (Steventon, Hampshire, 9 January 1773 – 1845) who, like Jane, did not marry. Cassandra was Austen's closest friend and confidante throughout her life.

Of her brothers Austen felt closest to Henry, who became a banker and (after his bank failed) an Anglican clergyman. His sister's literary agent, Henry's large circle of friends and acquaintances in London included bankers, merchants, publishers, painters and actors and he provided Austen with a view of social worlds not normally visible from a small parish in rural Hampshire. He married their first cousin (and Jane's close friend), Eliza de Feuillide.

George was sent to live with a local family at a young age because, according to Austen biographer Le Faye, he was "mentally abnormal and subject to fits"; he may also have been deaf and mute. Charles and Frank served in the navy, both rising to the rank of admiral. Edward was adopted by his fourth cousin, Thomas Knight, inheriting Knight's estate and taking his name in 1812.

Early life and education

Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at the Steventon rectory, and baptised on 5 April 1776. After several months at home her mother placed her with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman living nearby who nursed and raised her for twelve to eighteen months. In 1783, according to family tradition, Jane and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Ann Cawley and moved with her to Southampton later in the year. Both girls became ill with typhus, and Jane nearly died. Austen was then educated at home until she and Cassandra left for boarding school in early 1785. The school curriculum probably included French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music, and may have included drama. By December 1786, Jane and Cassandra had returned home because the Austens could not afford to send both daughters to school.

Austen acquired the remainder of her education by reading books, guided by her father and brothers James and Henry. She apparently had unfettered access to her father's library and that of family friend Warren Hastings, which made up a large and varied collection. Her father was tolerant of Austen's sometimes-risqué experiments in writing, and provided the sisters with expensive paper and other materials for writing and drawing. According to biographer Park Honan, life in the Austen home was lived in "an open, amused, easy intellectual atmosphere" where the ideas of those with whom the Austens disagreed (politically or socially) were discussed. After returning from school in 1786, Austen "never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family environment".

Private theatricals were also a part of the author's education. Beginning when Austin was seven years old and continuing until she was thirteen, her family and close friends staged a series of plays including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) and David Garrick's Bon Ton. Although the details are unknown, she would have joined in these activities as a spectator and (later) a participant. Most of the plays were comedies, suggesting a source for Austen's comedic and satirical gifts.

Juvenilia

Perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories and plays for her and her family's amusement. She later compiled "fair copies" of 29 of these early works into three bound notebooks, now known as the Juvenilia, with pieces written from 1787 to 1793. Manuscript evidence exists that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as 1809–1811 and her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814. Among the pieces are Love and Freindship, a satirical epistolary novel in which she mocked popular novels of sensibility, and The History of England, a 34-page manuscript accompanied by 13 watercolour miniatures by Cassandra.

Austen's History parodied popular historical writing, particularly Oliver Goldsmith's 1764 History of England. Austen wrote, "Henry the 4th ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399, after having prevailed on his cousin & predecessor Richard the 2nd, to resign it to him, & to retire for the rest of his Life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered." According to scholar Richard Jenkyns, Austen's Juvenilia are often "boisterous" and "anarchic"; he compares them to Monty Python and the work of 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne.

Adulthood

Austen continued to live in the family home, engaged in activities typical of women of her age and social standing; she practised the fortepiano, assisted her sister and mother with the supervision of servants and attended relatives during childbirth and on their deathbeds. She sent short pieces of writing to her newborn nieces, Fanny Catherine and Jane Anna Elizabeth. Austen was particularly proud of her accomplishments as a seamstress. She attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and neighbours and read novels (often her own) aloud to her family in the evenings. Socializing with neighbours often meant dancing—impromptu in someone's home after supper or at balls, held regularly in the town hall assembly rooms. According to her brother Henry, "Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it".

In 1793 Austen began and abandoned a short play later titled Sir Charles Grandison, or, The happy man: a comedy in five acts which she completed around 1800. The play parodied school-textbook abridgments of her favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) by Samuel Richardson. According to Park Honan, soon after writing Love and Freindship in 1789 Austen decided to "write for profit, to make stories her central effort" and began writing longer, more sophisticated works around 1793.

Between 1793 and 1795 Austen wrote Lady Susan, considered her most ambitious and sophisticated early novel. It is unlike Austen's other work; biographer Claire Tomalin describes the novella's heroine as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse lovers, friends and family:

Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration ... It stands alone in Austen's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.

Early novels

After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length novel: Elinor and Marianne. Cassandra later remembered that the epistolary novel was read to the family "before 1796". Without surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.

When Austen was twenty years old, Tom Lefroy (a nephew of neighbours) visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. Lefroy had just completed his university education and was moving to London for training as a barrister. Lefroy and Austen would have been introduced at a ball or other neighbourhood social gathering, and it is clear from her letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together: "I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together." The Lefroy family intervened, sending him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical, as both Lefroy and Austen must have known; neither had any money, and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Lefroy later visited Hampshire he was carefully kept from the Austens, and Jane never saw him again.

She began work on a second novel, First Impressions, in 1796. Austen completed the initial draft in August 1797, when she was 21, and it later became Pride and Prejudice. Like all of her novels, she read it aloud to her family as she was working on it and it became an "established favourite". At this time, her father made the first attempt to publish one of her novels. In November 1797, George wrote to London publisher Thomas Cadell asking if he would consider publishing "a Manuscript Novel, comprised in three Vols. about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina" (First Impressions) at the author's financial risk. Cadell quickly returned the letter, marked "Declined by Return of Post", and Austen may not have known about her father's efforts. After finishing First Impressions, she returned to Elinor and Marianne from November 1797 to mid-1798, revising it heavily, replacing the epistolary format with third-person narration and producing something close to Sense and Sensibility.

In mid-1798, after revising Elinor and Marianne, she began writing a third novel with the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the popular Gothic novel; she finished it about a year later. In early 1803 Henry Austen offered Susan to the London publisher Benjamin Crosby, who paid £10 for the copyright. Although Crosby promised early publication and advertised the book as being "in the press", he did nothing more and retained the unpublished manuscript until Austen bought back the copyright in 1816.

Bath and Southampton

In December 1800, George Austen unexpectedly announced his decision to retire from the ministry, leave Steventon and move the family to Bath. Although retirement and travel were good for the elder Austens, Jane was shocked to hear that she was moving from the only home she had ever known. An indication of her state of mind is her lack of productivity when she lived in Bath. She made some revisions to Susan and began—and abandoned—a new novel (The Watsons), but there was nothing like the productivity of 1795–1799. Tomalin suggests that this reflects a deep depression, disabling her as a writer; Honan disagrees, arguing that Austen wrote (or revised) her manuscripts throughout her life except for a few months after her father died.

In December 1802, Austen received her only known proposal of marriage. She and her sister visited Alethea and Catherine Bigg, old friends who lived near Basingstoke. Their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently finished his education at Oxford and was at home. Bigg-Wither proposed, and Austen accepted. As described by Caroline Austen (Jane's niece) and Reginald Bigg-Wither (a descendant), Harris was unattractive—a large, plain-looking man who spoke little, stuttered, was aggressive in conversation and almost completely tactless. However, Austen had known him since they were young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to her and her family; he was heir to extensive family estates in the area where the sisters had grown up. With these resources Austen could provide her parents a comfortable old age, give Cassandra a permanent home and, perhaps, assist her brothers in their careers. By the next morning, Austen decided that she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance. No contemporary letters or diaries describe how she felt about the proposal. In 1814 Austen wrote a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight, who asked for advice about a serious relationship: "Having written so much on one side of the question, I shall now turn around & entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection".

In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen began an unfinished novel, The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid clergyman with little money and four unmarried daughters. Sutherland describes the novel as "a study in the harsh economic realities of dependent women's lives". Honan suggests (and Tomalin agrees) that Austen stopped working on the novel after her father died on 21 January 1805 and her personal circumstances resembled those of her characters too closely for comfort.

Her father's final illness struck suddenly, leaving him (as Austen reported to her brother Francis) "quite insensible of his own state" and he died quickly. Jane, Cassandra and their mother were left in a precarious financial situation and Edward, James, Henry and Francis Austen pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters. For the next four years, the family's living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity; they lived part-time in rented quarters in Bath before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon and Godmersham. They spent the autumn of 1805 in the newly fashionable seaside resort of Worthing on the Sussex coast, at Stanford Cottage. It was here that Austen is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan and added its "Conclusion". Her observations of early Worthing helped inspire her final (unfinished) novel, Sanditon, the story of an up-and-coming seaside resort in Sussex. In 1806 the family moved to Southampton, where they shared a house with Frank Austen and his new wife and visited branches of the family.

On 5 April 1809 (about three months before the family's move to Chawton), Austen wrote an angry letter to Richard Crosby offering him a new manuscript of Susan if that was needed to secure immediate publication of her novel and otherwise requesting the return of the original so she could find another publisher. Crosby replied he had not agreed to publish the book by any particular time (or at all); Austen could repurchase the manuscript for the £10 he had paid her, and find another publisher. She did not have the money to repurchase the book, but she did eventually repurchase the manuscript in 1816.

Chawton

In early 1809, Austen's brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled life: the use of a large cottage in Chawton which was part of Edward's nearby estate, Chawton House. Jane, Cassandra and their mother moved into the cottage on 7 July 1809. In Chawton, life was quieter than it had been since the family's move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialise with the neighbouring gentry, entertaining only when family visited. Austen's niece, Anna, described the family's life in Chawton: "It was a very quiet life, according to our ideas, but they were great readers, and besides the housekeeping our aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in teaching some girl or boy to read or write." Austen wrote almost daily, and was apparently relieved of some household responsibilities to give her more opportunity to write. In this setting, she could be productive once more.

First publication

At Chawton, Austen published four novels which were generally well received. Through her brother Henry, Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were favourable; the novel became fashionable among opinion-makers, and the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen's earnings from Sense and Sensibility gave her some financial and psychological independence. Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice, a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. He advertised the book and it was an immediate success, receiving three favourable reviews and selling well; by October 1813, Egerton began selling a second edition. Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. Although the novel was ignored by reviewers, it was a popular success. All copies were sold within six months, and Austen's earnings for this novel were larger than for any of her others.

The author learned that the Prince Regent admired her novels and kept a set at each of his residences. In November 1815 the Prince Regent's librarian, James Stanier Clarke, invited Austen to visit the prince's London residence and hinted that she should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to the prince. Although Austen disliked the prince, she could not refuse the request. She later wrote Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters, a satirical outline of the "perfect novel" based on the librarian's many suggestions for a future Austen novel.

In mid-1815 Austen moved from Egerton to John Murray, a better-known London publisher, who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816. Although Emma sold well, the new edition of Mansfield Park did poorly and this offset most of her profit on Emma. They were the last novels published during her lifetime.

While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began a new novel she called The Elliots (later published as Persuasion). She completed its first draft in July 1816. Shortly after the publication of Emma, Henry Austen repurchased the copyright for Susan from Crosby. Austen was forced to postpone publishing both completed novels by family financial trouble. Henry Austen's bank failed in March 1816, depriving him of his assets, leaving him deeply in debt and costing Edward, James and Frank Austen large sums; Henry and Frank could no longer afford to support their mother and sisters.

Illness and death

Early in 1816, Austen began to feel unwell. She ignored her illness at first, continuing to work and participate in the usual round of family activities. By midyear her decline was unmistakable to her and to her family, and she began a long, slow and irregular deterioration which ended in her death the following year. Although most Austen biographers rely on Dr. Vincent Cope's tentative 1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison's disease, her final illness has also been described as consistent with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Katherine White of Britain's Addison's Disease Self Help Group suggests that Austen probably died of bovine tuberculosis, a disease now commonly associated with drinking unpasteurized milk. A contributing factor to Austen's death, discovered by Linda Robinson Walker and described online in the winter 2010 issue of Persuasions, might have been Brill–Zinsser disease (a recurrent form of typhus, which she had had as a child). Brill–Zinsser disease is to typhus as shingles is to chicken pox; when a person who has had typhus is subjected to abnormal physiological stress (such as malnutrition or another infection), it can resurface as Brill–Zinsser disease.

Despite her illness, Austen continued to work. She was dissatisfied with the ending of The Elliots and rewrote the final two chapters, finishing them on 6 August 1816. In January 1817 she began a new novel she called The Brothers (entitled Sanditon when it was first published in 1925) and completed twelve chapters before stopping in mid-March, probably due to illness. Although she made light of her condition to others, describing it as "bile" and rheumatism, as her disease progressed she experienced increasing difficulty in walking and other activities. By mid-April, Austen was bedridden. The following month Cassandra and Henry brought her to Winchester for medical treatment, but she died there on 18 July 1817 at age 41. Through his clerical connections, Henry arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her brother James praises Austen's personal qualities – including the "extraordinary endowments of her mind" – and expresses hope for her religious salvation, but does not mention her achievements as a writer.

Posthumous publication

After Austen's death, Cassandra and Henry arranged with John Murray for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set in December 1817. Henry contributed a biographical note which Claire Tomalin calls "a loving and polished eulogy", identifying his sister for the first time as the author of the novels. Sales were good for a year (only 321 copies remained unsold at the end of 1818) before they declined; Murray disposed of the remaining copies in 1820, and Austen's novels were out of print for twelve years. In 1832 publisher Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to her novels and, beginning in December 1832 or January 1833, published them in five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, he published the first collected edition of Austen's works. Since then, her novels have been continuously in print.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Jane Austen, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. ( view authors).