Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on December 16 1775 in the village of Steventon in Hampshire, England. Jane was the seventh of eight children and the second of two girls. Her older sister, Cassandra – named after their mother, was Jane’s closest friend. Her family was very creative and theatrical and Jane, like the rest of her siblings, was encouraged in her artistic endeavors by their father George Austen, the rector of the village. He is known to have been a gentle and intelligent man, supportive of Jane’s writing. His confidence was such that he sent Jane’s first draft of Pride and Prejudice (then First Impressions) to the publisher, Thomas Cadell, in London, who rejected the manuscript.

Jane started writing in the late 1780s largely for the amusement of her friends and family. This early period is know as her juvenilia and her pieces included Love and Freindship [sic] in 1790, Catherine, or the Bower in 1792 and Lady Susan, a novel in letters. Jane finished Elinor and Marianne, the predecessor to Sense and Sensibility, in 1795. The following year she started on First Impressions, which was eventually to become Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice.

Austen never married but did become romantically involved with one man and was proposed to by another. At the age of twenty, when starting work on her more famous works, Jane had her first romantic experience with TomLefroy, a young Irishman and nephew to her neighbours. She is known to have danced with him at four balls and wrote to her sister describing him as ‘a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man.’ Lefroy was soon after sent by his family to London to continue his legal education, after they feared he may propose to Jane. It is thought that they never saw each other again. At twenty-seven, Jane was proposed to by Harris Bigg-Wither, heir to the grand Manydown House, near Basingstoke. Jane accepted his proposal but changed her mind and withdrew her acceptance the next day.

In 1816 shortly after the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), Jane started to feel unwell. Jane Austen died in Winchester at the age of 42 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Jane published her now famous novels anonymously and, although her works received widespread recognition at the time, she received little special attention herself. However, the Prince Regent greatly admired her work and requested that Emma be dedicated to him.

Jane Austen has been criticized for the narrow scope of her novels, especially considering the turbulent time in which she was writing. This ‘narrowness,’ however, is just what gives her stories the universal appeal that they still have. Family relations, dating, and dream marriages will always be of interest and, as she states in her own words, ‘3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.’