Jane Austen was an English writer who is famous for her six novels. These novels talk about and give opinions on the British upper-class people at the end of the 18th century. In her stories, Jane Austen often looks at how important marriage was for women to have a good social position and financial security. Her books also comment on the novels from the second half of the 18th century that were very emotional and describe the shift to a more realistic style of writing in the 19th century.
Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. Her Father George Austen served as the rector and came from a wealthy family of wool merchants. As each generation of eldest sons received inheritances, the wealth was divided, and George’s branch of the family fell into poverty. Her mother was Cassandra Leigh. Cassandra gave birth to three children while living at Deane: James in 1765, George in 1766, and Edward in 1767.
In 1768, the family finally took up residence in Steventon. Henry was the first child to be born there, in 1771. Cassandra in 1773, Francis in 1774, and then in 1775 Jane Austen. These siblings had a significant influence on Jane Austen’s life and her writing.
Jane Austen had a routine of attending church regularly, spending time with friends and neighbors, and reading novels, which she often wrote, aloud to her family in the evenings. Socializing with neighbors often involved dancing, and her brother Henry noted that Jane was particularly skilled at it.
In 1783, Jane and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford for education under the care of Mrs. Ann Cawley. But both sisters fell ill with typhus, and Jane came very close to losing her life. After recovering, she received education at home until early 1785 when she, along with her sister, attended the Reading Abbey Girls’ School, which was overseen by Mrs. La Tournelle. The curriculum at the school likely included subjects like French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music, and drama. The sisters returned home before December 1786 because the school fees were too expensive for the Austen family. After 1786, Jane Austen never lived anywhere outside her immediate family’s environment.
When Jane Austen was growing up, her family and friends used to put on plays in the barn at their home. These plays included works like “The Rivals” by Richard Sheridan and “Bon Ton” by David Garrick. Jane’s older brother James wrote some of these plays, and she likely took part in them.
Starting from the age of eleven, Jane Austen enjoyed writing poems and stories for her own amusement and to entertain her family. In these stories, she often made fun of common story plots and let her imagination run wild with ideas of women having a lot of power, freedom, and sometimes even doing things that were not allowed.
Between 1787 and 1793, Jane Austen put together three notebooks containing twenty-nine of her early works. She called these notebooks “Volume the First,” “Volume the Second,” and “Volume the Third,” and they hold around 90,000 words that she wrote during that time. These writings, known as the Juvenilia, are described as lively and rebellious, and Richard Jenkyns compares them to the work of a famous 18th-century novelist named Laurence Sterne.
when she was just fourteen years old wrote A satirical novel “Love and Freindship” in 1790, in which she mocked popular novels of sensibility. The following year, at the age of fifteen, Jane Austen wrote a short book called “The History of England.” This book had thirty-four pages and included thirteen small watercolor illustrations by her sister, Cassandra. In “The History of England,” Austen poked fun at the kind of history writing that was popular at the time, especially a book by Oliver Goldsmith called “History of England” from 1764.
According to some experts, shortly after writing “Love and Freindship,” Jane Austen decided to start writing with the goal of making a living from it. In other words, she wanted to become a professional writer. When she was about eighteen years old, she began working on longer and more complex stories.
After her earlier works, Jane Austen started writing a novel called “Northanger Abbey,” but she didn’t finish it. A year later, she began working on a short play, which she later called “Sir Charles Grandison or the Happy Man.” It had six acts, but she didn’t complete it either. Between the years 1793 and 1795 (when she was between eighteen and twenty years old) Jane Austen wrote a short epistolary novel titled “Lady Susan.” This is often considered one of her most ambitious and sophisticated early works.
When Jane Austen was twenty years old, she met Tom Lefroy her neighbor who studies law. Tom had just completed his university and was about to move to London to train as a barrister. In her first known letter to her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen described Tom Lefroy as a “very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man,” and she was genuinely attracted to him.
However, the Lefroy family intervened in the relationship between Jane and Tom and sent him away. If Tom Lefroy ever visited Hampshire again, he was kept away from the Austen family, and Jane never saw him again. Despite this, Tom Lefroy remained on Jane Austen’s mind, and she continued to write about him in her letters to her sister.
After completing her short novel “Lady Susan,” Jane Austen started working on her first full-length novel, “Elinor and Marianne.” She also began writing her second novel, originally titled “First Impressions” but later published as “Pride and Prejudice,” in 1796. Jane finished the first draft of “First Impressions” in August 1797 when she was 21 years old. Her father, George Austen, liked the novel and wanted to get it published, but no publisher showed interest in it.
After finishing “First Impressions,” Jane Austen went back to working on “Elinor and Marianne” in 1797-1798, which later became “Sense and Sensibility.”
Around the middle of 1798, after making revisions to “Elinor and Marianne,” Jane began writing her third novel, originally titled “Susan” but later published as “Northanger Abbey.” It was a satire of the popular Gothic novels of the time. Jane completed this work in about a year.
In early 1803, her brother Henry Austen offered “Susan” to Benjamin Crosby, a publisher in London, to publish. However, nothing came of it, and the manuscript remained with Crosby, unpublished. Jane Austen later bought back the copyright from Crosby in 1816.
Next, she starts a new novel The Watson. The years from 1801 to 1804 are something of a blank space for Austen as Cassandra destroyed all of her letters from her sister in this period for unknown reasons. In December 1802, Austen received her only known proposal of marriage. Her father died on 21 January 1805. She stopped her work for her father’s death and financial problems.
On April 5, 1809, Jane Austen’s family moved to Chawton, which brought them some financial stability. During her time, it was common for women authors to publish their books without revealing their real names. Back then, society expected women to primarily focus on being wives and mothers, and writing was considered a secondary activity for them.
Through her brother Henry’s efforts, a publisher named Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Jane’s novel “Sense and Sensibility.” However, like all of Jane Austen’s novels except “Pride and Prejudice,” it was published “on commission,” meaning the author took the financial risk. “Sense and Sensibility” was released in October 1811, and it was credited as being written “By a Lady.” The book received positive reviews and became popular among young aristocrats, selling about 750 copies. Jane earned £140 from “Sense and Sensibility,” providing her with some financial independence.
Following the success of “Sense and Sensibility,” all of Jane Austen’s subsequent books were advertised as written “By the author of Sense and Sensibility,” and her name never appeared on her books during her lifetime. Had Austen sold Pride and Prejudice on commission, she would have made a profit of £475 or twice her father’s annual income. Although “Mansfield Park” received little attention from reviewers, it was well-received by readers. Her novels were also translated into French.
Interestingly, even though the Prince Regent admired her work and requested a meeting, she declined the invitation due to his questionable behavior. In December 1815, Jane Austen’s novel “Emma” was published by John Murray, a London publisher. Following that, a second edition of “Mansfield Park” was published in February 1816. These were the last novels by Jane Austen to be published during her lifetime.
Unfortunately, by early 1816, Jane Austen wasn’t feeling well, but she ignored the warning signs and continued to work despite her illness. In January 1817, she began writing a novel titled “The Brothers,” which was later published as “Sanditon” in 1925. She managed to complete twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, most likely due to her deteriorating health. Her brother Henry and her sister Cassandra took her to Winchester for medical treatment. By this time, she was in agonizing pain and had come to terms with the prospect of death.
Jane Austen passed away in Winchester on July 18, 1817, at the age of 41. Henry, using his connections as a clergyman, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph, composed by her brother James, praised Jane Austen’s personal qualities, expressed hope for her salvation, and mentioned her “extraordinary endowments of her mind,” but it did not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer.
After Jane Austen’s death in July 1817, her sister Cassandra, her brother Henry Austen, and John Murray worked together to arrange for the publication of “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey” as a set. Henry Austen contributed a Biographical Note in December 1817, which was the first time that Jane was officially identified as the author of her novels.
Jane Austen’s literary works provide implicit critiques of sentimental novels and Romantic writers like Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmith, whose styles and genres she rejected. Instead, she returned to the tradition of writers like Richardson and Fielding, focusing on realistic portrayals of manners and social issues.
Literary critics F. R. Leavis and Ian Watt positioned Jane Austen in the same literary tradition as Richardson and Fielding. They believed that she skillfully employed their tradition of irony, realism, and satire, establishing herself as a writer superior to both of them.
Jane Austen experimented with Richardson’s epistolary style, seen in works like Richardson’s “Pamela,” which was a prototype for sentimental novels. It conveyed moral lessons within love stories.
Her narrative style made extensive use of free indirect speech, making her one of the first English novelists to do so extensively. This style allowed her to present a character’s thoughts directly to the reader while still maintaining narrative control. It enabled her to shift between the narrator’s voice and the characters’ perspectives.
Sir Walter Scott, a prominent novelist of her time, anonymously reviewed Jane Austen’s “Emma” in 1815 and praised her for her realism. He appreciated her ability to depict everyday life accurately rather than relying on imaginary, extravagant scenes. He even drew favorable comparisons between Austen and literary giants like Homer and Shakespeare, commending the dramatic qualities of her narrative.
Renowned author Henry James also spoke highly of Jane Austen multiple times, once ranking her alongside Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry Fielding as one of the “fine painters of life.”
List of works :
Novels : Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous), Persuasion (1818, posthumous), Lady Susan (1871, posthumous).
Unfinished fiction : The Watsons (1804), Sanditon (1817).
Juvenilia—Volume the First (1787–1793).
Juvenilia—Volume the Second (1787–1793).
Juvenilia—Volume the Third (1787–1793).