Jane Austen was an author in 18th and 19th century Britain. Her works include Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Emma.
Jane was born on the 16th of December 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire to George and Cassandra Austen. She had five older brothers – James, George, Edward, Henry and Francis – and an older sister named Cassandra. Her father was a rector at the local parish. Before Jane was born, her mother realised that George was severely disabled and chose to give him into foster care in the hopes that someone would be able to take better care of him. Eventually, one final child, Charles, was born.
Jane’s upbringing was quite unconventional for her time, and her opportunity to meet different and openly discuss opposing points of view helped shape Jane’s view of the world. She had complete access to the libraries of her father and a close family friend and was supported by her family in her writing. Her father even provided her with supplies for her hobby. The Austen children and their friends also often performed plays, many of which were comedies. Her older brother James wrote the prologues and epilogues to their performances, and it is thought that Jane probably helped him when she was able. The family regularly socialised with their neighbours, and Jane was known among them for her talent at dancing. She was also extremely close to her older sister Cassandra, whom she considered to be her closest friend.
The girls were sent to Oxford in 1783 to receive an education, then to Southampton when their teacher relocated there. Later that year they were sent home after becoming sick with typhus, an illness that nearly cost Jane her life. For two years they were homeschooled until being sent to attend a boarding school in Reading. They only managed to attend for a year until the expenses became too much for their family’s modest income. They were educated at home by their father and older brothers from then on, and there was little to no difference in the books used to teach the boys than the ones used to teach the sisters.
Between 1787 and 1793, Jane putting together short pieces of writing to entertain family and friends. Twenty-nine of these works were compiled into three volumes of a collection called Juvenilia. Among these works were Love and Freindship.
Jane met a man named Thomas Lefroy when she was twenty years old. The two got along almost immediately and became very close friends, and in one of her letters to Cassandra, Jane expressed that she expected an offer of marriage to be made to her by him. Despite apparent attraction on both sides, they knew a marriage between them would not be successful as neither of them had money. Lefroy’s family removed him from her society only a month after their first meeting, and kept him away from her for the rest of their lives. The two never saw each other again.
Around 1796, Jane had completed her first novel entitled Elinor and Marianne. The original transcript of this work is lost so it is uncertain how much of it survives in her published work Sense and Sensibility, though it is generally thought to be that novel’s precursor. After writing Elinor and Marianne, Jane began to work on First Impressions, which would late become Pride and Prejudice. She completed it in 1797 and was so loved by her family that her father wrote to a publisher in London to see if they would consider it. His inquiry was returned without a reply. Jane began working on a novel entitled Susan in 1789, which would later become Northanger Abbey. A couple years after completion, the copyright to Susan was sold to a publisher. Despite being advertised and the assurance that it would receive early publication, it was not produced at this time and Jane was able to buy the copyright back after several years.
George Austen retired at the end of 1800 and relocated his family to Bath. During this time, Jane wrote less but continued to revise her existing works. It is unclear if this was due to unhappiness in her new home or due to a new, busy social life. What she did between 1801 and 1804 is mostly unknown – Cassandra destroyed all letters from this time and it is not known why. What is known is that in 1802, a man named Harris Bigg-Wither proposed to her when the Austen sisters were visiting friends in Basingstoke. Harris was their friends’ younger brother and was described as being not very attractive in appearance or manner, but a marriage between them would have brought a level of security to the Austen family that induced Jane to accept him. She rejected him the next day after realising that she had made a mistake.
George Austen died suddenly on the 21st of January 1805, leaving the family in a financially unstable position. Edward, James, Henry and Francis supported the women as best they could, but their new situation meant that the women spent the next few years moving around a lot. In 1809 they moved into a cottage that belonged to Edward’s estate in Chawton. The ladies no longer socialised as much as they had in Bath or Steventon and led a more relaxed lifestyle as well as helping the poor. While they lived here, Jane published four novels with the help of Edward. At the time, women did not have the right to sign contracts and it was frowned upon for them to be published authors, so Jane had her works published anonymously (her name never appeared on any of her books during her lifetime). Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1816.
Jane’s novels were incredibly well-received (the Prince Regent even kept copies of them at all his residences) and were produced in larger quantities than was typical of novels at that time. When Emma was published in 1816, approximately 2,000 copies were printed as opposed to the usual 750 for successful novels. The novels were translated into French and sold in France without her knowledge, though the translator – a woman named Isabelle de Montolieu – had very poor English and drastically changed Jane’s writing. When Persuasion was published in France in 1821, it was the first of Jane’s novels to identify her as the author.
Jane’s first draft of Persuasion (originally titled The Elliots) was completed in 1816 shortly after Emma was published, but she was forced to forgo getting it (and Susan, which Henry had recently been able to repurchase) as Henry lost all his assents and fell into debt. This cost his three brothers a lot of money, and consequently neither Henry nor Frank could afford to keep supporting Jane, Cassandra or their mother.
At this time, Jane had begun feeling unwell but ignored the symptoms she was presenting. Slowly, her health began to decline due to what historians now believe was Addison’s disease. Her illness worsened when her uncle died and left all his money to his wife, leaving Jane and her family nothing. Despite this, she continued to write, and she finished The Elliots in August 1816. The following January, she began a novel entitled The Brothers, of which she completed twelve chapters before she put down her pen for the final time on the 18th of March 1817. The Brothers was renamed Sanditon when it was published in 1925.
By April 1817, Jane could no longer get out of bed, and though Cassandra and Henry took her to Winchester for medical treatment, she was in intense pain and passed away on the 18th of July of what has now been identified as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was buried at Winchester Cathedral.
After her death, Cassandra and Henry organised for Persuasion and Northanger Abbey to be published and allowed her to be written as the author for the first time.
Disclaimer: All of this information comes from my own research and knowledge, so if I have missed anything out or got something wrong please let me know and I’ll try my best to fix it. Thank you!
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