jane austen biography britannica

Jane Austen

(1775-1817)

Who Was Jane Austen?

While not widely known in her own time, Jane Austen's comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility , are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism.

The seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen, Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Austen's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Austen was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. The children also authored and put on plays and charades.

Over the span of her life, Austen would become especially close to her father and older sister, Cassandra. Indeed, she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work.

To acquire a more formal education, Austen and Cassandra were sent to boarding schools during Austen's pre-adolescence. During this time, Austen and her sister caught typhus, with Austen nearly succumbing to the illness. After a short period of formal education cut short by financial constraints, they returned home and lived with the family from that time forward.

Literary Works

Ever fascinated by the world of stories, Austen began to write in bound notebooks. In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Freindship [sic], a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing. The next year she wrote The History of England... , a 34-page parody of historical writing that included illustrations drawn by Cassandra. These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as Austen's Juvenilia .

Austen spent much of her early adulthood helping run the family home, playing piano, attending church, and socializing with neighbors. Her nights and weekends often involved cotillions, and as a result, she became an accomplished dancer. On other evenings, she would choose a novel from the shelf and read it aloud to her family, occasionally one she had written herself. She continued to write, developing her style in more ambitious works such as Lady Susan , another epistolary story about a manipulative woman who uses her sexuality, intelligence and charm to have her way with others. Austen also started to write some of her future major works, the first called Elinor and Marianne , another story told as a series of letters, which would eventually be published as Sense and Sensibility . She began drafts of First Impressions , which would later be published as Pride and Prejudice , and Susan , later published as Northanger Abbey by Jane's brother, Henry, following Austen's death.

In 1801, Austen moved to Bath with her father, mother and Cassandra. Then, in 1805, her father died after a short illness. As a result, the family was thrust into financial straits; the three women moved from place to place, skipping between the homes of various family members to rented flats. It was not until 1809 that they were able to settle into a stable living situation at Austen's brother Edward's cottage in Chawton.

Now in her 30s, Austen started to anonymously publish her works. In the period spanning 1811-16, she pseudonymously published Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice (a work she referred to as her "darling child," which also received critical acclaim), Mansfield Park and Emma .

In 1816, at the age of 41, Austen started to become ill with what some say might have been Addison's disease. She made impressive efforts to continue working at a normal pace, editing older works as well as starting a new novel called The Brothers , which would be published after her death as Sanditon . Another novel, Persuasion , would also be published posthumously. At some point, Austen's condition deteriorated to such a degree that she ceased writing. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.

While Austen received some accolades for her works while still alive, with her first three novels garnering critical attention and increasing financial reward, it was not until after her death that her brother Henry revealed to the public that she was an author.

Today, Austen is considered one of the greatest writers in English history, both by academics and the general public. In 2002, as part of a BBC poll, the British public voted her No. 70 on a list of "100 Most Famous Britons of All Time." Austen's transformation from little-known to internationally renowned author began in the 1920s, when scholars began to recognize her works as masterpieces, thus increasing her general popularity. The Janeites, a Jane Austen fan club, eventually began to take on wider significance, similar to the Trekkie phenomenon that characterizes fans of the Star Trek franchise. The popularity of her work is also evident in the many film and TV adaptations of Emma , Mansfield Park , Pride and Prejudice , and Sense and Sensibility , as well as the TV series and film Clueless , which was based on Emma .

Austen was in the worldwide news in 2007, when author David Lassman submitted to several publishing houses a few of her manuscripts with slight revisions under a different name, and they were routinely rejected. He chronicled the experience in an article titled "Rejecting Jane," a fitting tribute to an author who could appreciate humor and wit.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Jane Austen
• Birth Year: 1775
• Birth date: December 16, 1775
• Birth City: Steventon, Hampshire, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Emma.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Death Year: 1817
• Death date: July 18, 1817
• Death City: Winchester, Hampshire, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Jane Austen Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/writer/jane-austen
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 6, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
• I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
• There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

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Jane Austen: A brief biography

Jane Austen was born at the Rectory in Steventon , a village in north-east Hampshire, on 16th December 1775.

She was the seventh child and second daughter of the rector, the Revd George Austen, and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh). Of her brothers, two were clergymen, one inherited rich estates in Kent and Hampshire from a distant cousin and the two youngest became Admirals in the Royal Navy; her only sister, like Jane herself, never married.

Steventon Rectory was Jane Austen’s home for the first 25 years of her life. From here she travelled to Kent to stay with her brother Edward in his mansion at Godmersham Park near Canterbury, and she also had some shorter holidays in Bath , where her aunt and uncle lived. During the 1790s she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey; her trips to Kent and Bath gave her the local colour for the settings of these last two books.

In 1801 the Revd George Austen retired, and he and his wife, with their two daughters Jane and Cassandra, left Steventon and settled in Bath.

The Austens rented No. 4 Sydney Place from 1801-1804, and then stayed for a few months at No. 3 Green Park Buildings East, where Mr. Austen died in 1805. While the Austens were based in Bath, they went on holidays to seaside resorts in the West Country, including Lyme Regis in Dorset – this gave Jane the background for Persuasion.

Jane fell ill in 1816 – possibly with Addison’s Disease – and in the summer of 1817 her family took her to Winchester for medical treatment. However, the doctor could do nothing for her, and she died peacefully on 18th July 1817 at their lodgings in No. 8 College Street. She was buried a few days later in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Jane’s novels reflect the world of the English country gentry of the period, as she herself had experienced it. Due to the timeless appeal of her amusing plots, and the wit and irony of her style, her works have never been out of print since they were first published, and are frequently adapted for stage, screen and television. Jane Austen is now one of the best-known and best-loved authors in the English-speaking world.

Profile of Jane Austen

Novelist of the Romantic Period

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• B.A., Mundelein College
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Known for: popular novels of the Romantic period

Dates: December 16, 1775 - July 18, 1817

About Jane Austen

Jane Austen's father, George Austen, was an Anglican clergyman, and raised his family in his parsonage. Like his wife, Cassandra Leigh Austen, he was descended from landed gentry that had become involved in manufacturing with the coming of the Industrial Revolution . George Austen supplemented his income as a rector with farming and with tutoring boys who boarded with the family. The family was associated with the Tories and maintained a sympathy for the Stuart succession rather than the Hanoverian.

Jane was sent for the first year or so of her life to stay with her wetnurse. Jane was close to her sister Cassandra, and letters to Cassandra that survive have helped later generations understand the life and work of Jane Austen.

As was usual for girls at the time, Jane Austen was educated primarily at home; her brothers, other than George, were educated at Oxford. Jane was well-read; her father had a large library of books including novels. From 1782 to 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra studied at the home of their aunt, Ann Cawley, returning after a bout with typhus, of which Jane nearly died. In 1784, the sisters were at a boarding school in Reading, but the expense was too great and the girls returned home in 1786.

Jane Austen began writing , about 1787, circulating her stories mainly to family and friends. On George Austen's retirement in 1800, he moved the family to Bath, a fashionable social retreat. Jane found the environment was not conducive to her writing, and wrote little for some years, though she sold her first novel while living there. The publisher held it from publication until after her death.

Marriage Possibilities

Jane Austen never married. Her sister, Cassandra, was engaged for a time to Thomas Fowle, who died in the West Indies and left her with a small inheritance. Jane Austen had several young men court her. One was Thomas Lefroy whose family opposed the match, another a young clergyman who suddenly died. Jane accepted the proposal of the wealthy Harris Bigg-Wither, but then withdrew her acceptance to the embarrassment of both parties and their families.

When George Austen died in 1805, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved first to the home of Jane's brother Francis, who was frequently away. Their brother, Edward, had been adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin; when Edward's wife died, he provided a home for Jane and Cassandra and their mother on his estate. It was at this home in Chawton where Jane resumed her writing. Henry, a failed banker who had become a clergyman like his father, served as Jane's literary agent.

Jane Austen died, probably of Addison's disease, in 1817. Her sister, Cassandra, nursed her during her illness. Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Novels Published

Jane Austen's novels were first published anonymously; her name does not appear as author until after her death. Sense and Sensibility was written "By a Lady," and posthumous publications of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were credited simply to the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park . Her obituaries disclosed that she had written the books, as does her brother Henry's "Biographical Notice" in editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .

Juvenilia were published posthumously.

• Northanger Abbey  - sold 1803, not published until 1819
• Sense and Sensibility  - published 1811 but Austen had to pay the printing costs
• Pride and Prejudice  - 1812
• Mansfield Park  - 1814
• Emma  - 1815
• Persuasion  - 1819
• Father: George Austen, Anglican clergyman, died 1805
• Mother: Cassandra Leigh
• James, also a Church of England clergyman
• George, institutionalized, disability uncertain: may have been mental retardation, may have been deafness
• Henry, banker then Anglican clergyman, served as Jane's agent with her publishers
• Francis and Charles, fought in the Napoleonic wars, became admirals
• Edward, adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight
• older sister Cassandra (1773 - 1845) who also never married
• Aunt: Ann Cawley; Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra studied at her home 1782-3
• Aunt: Jane Leigh Perrot, who hosted the family for a time after George Austen retired
• Cousin: Eliza, Comtesse of Feuillide, whose husband was guillotined during the Reign of Terror in France, and who later married Henry

Selected Quotations

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

"The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it."

"What strange creatures brothers are!"

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be kindly spoken of."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to Yes, she ought to say No, directly."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage."

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

"Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments."

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

"It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble."

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

"...as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"...the soul is of no sect, no party: it is, as you say, our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious and political distinctions."

"You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."

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Jane Austen Biography

Life and times of english author jane austen, jane austen's life was relatively short but it nonetheless produced a lasting legacy including six major published works..

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Jane Austen

Jane austen (1775-1817).

The Anti-Romantic?

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 and into a middle-class family in Steventon, Hampshire. She was the seventh of eight children born to Rev. George Austen and his wife Cassandra.

Austen was taught briefly by Mrs. Cawley in 1783, and later, accompanied her sister to the Abbey Boarding School in Reading from 1785-1786 (Pemberley); Aside from one year of formal schooling, she was educated at home. Her father’s library consisted of about 500 books, which she regularly perused, and reputedly, she was particularly fond of works by Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Fanny Burney (Biography, Pemberley) and William Cowper (Literature Post).

Austen started writing at an early age and completed her first novel, Love and Friendship , at age 14 (JASA). The book was succeeded by A History of England by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian (JASA), which was never published. Although her father greatly encouraged and supported her writing, Austen was very self-conscious and, supposedly, hid pages under the desk plotter if anyone came into the room and discovered her writing (JASA).

When Austen wasn’t engaged in reading and writing, she frequently attended parties and balls in Hampshire, and she visited London, Bath and Southampton to see concerts and plays. Although she never married, Jane did have love interests–most noteworthy Thomas Lefroy. A law student, who later became the Chief Justice of Ireland, Lefroy is frequently mentioned in Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra. However strong the attachment was between them, Lefroy couldn’t afford to marry Austen, and the relationship dissolved.

In addition, when Austen and her sister stayed with a friend in Manydown in December 1802, she was proposed to by her friend’s brother, a wealthy landowner named Harris Bigg-Wither. Austen accepted, but a day later, thought better of her decision. She and her sister Cassandra ran away from Manydown and to her brother James, who was residing at the old, family home in Steventon. Austen’s unexpected departure ended the engagement and Austen’s romantic life as viewed by most scholars.

After the death of her father in 1806, Austen, her mother, and Cassandra moved about the country, settling for some time in Bath, Clifton, Southampton, and Portsmouth. Faced with financial difficulties, the women eventually moved in with Austen’s brother Edward at the Chawton Estate in Hampshire. At some point after, she later returned to Steventon and lived with her brother James. While Jane stayed at Chawton and Steventon, she published the following novels:

• Sense and Sensibility (1810-1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Persuasion (1816)
• Northanger Abbey (1817)
• Sandition (Unfinished)

Between 1815 and 1817, Jane became increasingly ill and eventually moved to moved to Winchester for medical treatment. Her last novel, Sandition , was left unfinished, the writing interrupted by her death on July 18, 1817 from Addison’s Disease. Her body was buried in the Winchester Cathedral.

Austen’s works were generally well-received by her contemporaries. As Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1846, “‘That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me'” (Jane Austen’s Art, Pemberley). Andrew Trollope was also an admirer of Austen’s work and remarked, “‘Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, — what we generally mean when we speak of romance — she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; — and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her,'” (Jane Austen’s Art, Pemberley).

However, as odd as it might seem, Charlotte Bronte detested Austen’s works. In a letter to George Lewes in 1848, Bronte described Austen’s Pride & Prejudice as “An accurate daguerrotyped [photographed] portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck [stream]. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you. but I shall run the risk . . . Now I can understand admiration of George Sand . . . she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant” (Jane Austen’s Art, Pemberley).

Perhaps Charlotte Bronte disliked Jane Austen because she wrote “daguerrotyped portraits of the commonplace” and not deep, sentimental novels like the ones Bronte wrote herself. Was Jane Austen a Romantic? This is an issue that needs much exploration and will hopefully be answered, in part, by looking at the outcome of two of Jane Austen’s Romantic heroines: Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility and Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey .

Sense and Sensibility

Marianne Dashwood, the Hopeless Romantic

In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility , Marianne –the “sentimental” Dashwood sister– is ridiculed by the narrator (presumably Austen herself) and her sister Elinor for being over-Romantic. In the introduction, Marianne is described in the following way: “She [is] sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows [and] her joys [can] have no moderation. She [is] generous, amiable [and] interesting: she [is] everything but p rudent” (5). Marianne is intense and passionate in everything she does, and is so exaggeratingly emotional, that by modern-standards she would be the quintessential “drama-queen.” Marianne has taken the ardent, fiery emotion delineated in Romantic poetry and integrated it into her own personality and life. Marianne has become a living work of Romantic art, but through the course of the novel, Marianne learns that she must be sensible and pragmatic to function in the real-world.

Marianne is not content on just being Romantic herself, she passes judgment on other characters and degrades them for not sharing in her intense passion. As she remarks about Edward Ferrars:

“[H]e is not the kind of young man…who could seriously attach my sister [Elinor]. His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this… he has no real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor’s drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth…He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. O mamma! how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s manner in reading to us last night… To hear [Cowper’s] beautiful lines, which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!” (9-10).

Edward is a good-hearted, respectable, but albeit shy young man who earnestly loves Elinor, but he only engages in as much emotion as conventionally proper in 18th century society. This does not satisfy Marianne… but then again, nothing does.

However, while Marianne is sentimental, this does not necessarily imply that she is a Romantic. However, Marianne not only has a deep appreciation for Romantic poetry (ie. Cowper and Scott), but what she also creates improvised Romantic poetry in her everyday speech, indicating that she has integrated Romantic ideas into her psyche. An example of this “improvised Romantic poetry” is Marianne’s farewell ode to Norland. “O happy house!” she says, “could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! and you, ye wellknown trees! but you will continue the same. No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer! No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?” (14). Like a Romantic poet, Marianne uses Nature to touch on some deeper, transcendental thought– in this case how the trees around Norland continue to exist and time continue to pass after the Dashwoods are gone. In addition, in a conversation with Edward Ferrars and Elinor, Marianne makes an interesting remark which demonstrates that she is a connoisseur of Romantic Poetry and dislikes any amateur attempts at creating it. (See Marianne’s Appreciation of Landscape .) While Edward unknowingly describes the countryside in Romantic terms, Marianne scoffs and says “ admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was” (46). Edward, who Marianne has already labeled spiritless and dull, is putting landscape in Romantic poetry to shame by his improvised adaptation of it. Marianne knows good Romantic poetry, and Edward’s landscape descriptions have fallen short of it.

Austen’s final opinion on Romanticism is Sense and Sensibility is ultimately determined by Marianne’s downfall and recovery. Willoughby, who Marianne believed to be the love her life, betrays her and marries a wealthier woman. He never intended to court Marianne, and if she had made sure Willoughby was courting her without sucking him into the Romantic love story she had planned for them, he would not have gotten trapped and had to betray her later. After mourning the loss of her “beloved,” inconstant Willoughby to the point of making herself ill, Marianne falls in love with Colonel Brandon, an older, self-sacrificing, sensible man who stood on the sidelines while Marianne willingly gave her heart to his competitor (Willoughby). Marianne’s experience and the influence of Colonel Brandon transform her into a pragmatic, sensible woman who still has an appreciation for the Romantic, but learns where to separate art from reality.

Is it a coincidence that Marianne can only find happiness when she becomes less Romantic and more sensible? I think not. In Sense and Sensibility , Jane Austen uses Marianne to show the dangers of Romantic poetry and what happens when people try to live the “Romantic life.”

Northanger Abbey

A Parody of the Romantic, Gothic Novel

One form of art connected with Romanticism is the Gothic novel. After the publication of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto in 1765, which was considered the first English Gothic Novel, this genre became increasingly popular. All of these novels are set in dark, deserted places that were once splendid and beautiful, but have since fallen into states of decay. Examples of Gothic settings are castles, abbeys, the moors, old mansions, ruined buildings, and essentially any dark, shadowy places that evoke feelings of horror and suspicion. The decay of the setting is often representative of the moral degeneration of civilization also supported by the plot. Like the Romantic poets (and Rousseau) who observed Nature and desired to go back to the simple, uncorrupt Golden Age before society, the setting of Gothic literature shows how corrupt the world had become.

The plot of the Gothic Novel tends to follow a specific format: The heroine of the novel — a weak, curious, “damsel-in-distress” type character prone to fainting — becomes isolated in one of the aforementioned dark, mysterious places. She gets seduced by the villain and is either murdered, tortured, or raped. Generally the villain destroys the virtue of the heroine, but she soon gets rescued by the hero of the work– usually a character previously introduced earlier in the novel, but only as a supporting character. The heroine is freed from danger and lives happily ever after with her rescuer.

If Northanger Abbey were a Gothic Novel, here are how two potential Gothic plots would work out:

However, Northanger Abbey is only a parody of a Gothic novel, and all of these potential plots fall through.

From the start, Catherine Morland is set up as the anti-heroine. As Austen writes, “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother her own person and disposition, were all equally against her” (3). Catherine’s family was neither rich nor poor, she lived happily with nine other siblings, and nothing about her family’s circumstances would nurture the characteristics of a heroine. Austen also writes:

“She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features; -so much for her person;- and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind . . . [she] greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a doormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush . . . [and] for with all [the] symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper; was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with a few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house” (3-4).

These are not the characteristics of a weak, Gothic heroine. As Catherine grew older, she became more like a heroine –beautiful, feminine, and fine– but despite the transitory moments of brainlessness and curious nature, but she doesn’t quite fit into the mold of the classic, gothic heroine.

Unlike Marianne Dashwood, Catherine is more interested in the Augustan writers than the Romantic ones. Among her favorites Augustans are Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and James Thompson (5). It was only after becoming acquainted with Isabella Thorpe that Catherine becomes interested in Gothic novelists like Anne Radcliffe. This new interest leads to a series of conversations about gothic novels and novels in general, which may be Jane Austen voicing her opinions through her characters and the narrator. The narrator writes that while the public considers novels inferior art forms and guilty pleasures, they are really works of genius that say a great deal about the human condition. In addition, they aren’t just for women, and the more “horrid” the novel, the better. To look at specific passages on Gothic novels, please see the Northanger Abbey and the Discussion of Novels page .

When General Tilney asks Catherine to stay with his family at Northanger Abbey, Catherine is enraptured and thinks that circumstances have thrown her into a Gothic plot. The Abbey’s “long, damp passages, its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach, and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends, some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun” (115). Henry Tilney, knowing Catherine’s interest in the Gothic, raises her expectations and frightens her with a mock-Gothic story about what her stay will be like. (See Tilney’s Description of Northanger Abbey ).

However, upon visiting Northanger Abbey, Catherine’s hopes to find a Gothic setting are let down. “[S]o low did the building stand, that [Catherine] found herself passing through the great gates of the lodge into the very grounds of Northanger, without having discerned even an antique chimney” (133). The lodges were “of a modern appearance,” the road a “smooth, level road of fine gravel,” and “the breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain… The furniture was in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fire-place, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence . . . were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved–the form of them was Gothic–they might be even casements–but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs, the difference was distressing” (133-134). Northanger Abbey lacked all the haunted corridors and secret passages that Catherine expected; instead, it was an average, modern dwelling. In this, Austen is making the statement that ordinary, unheroic people like Catherine Morland shouldn’t fear Gothic-novels or long to be in them. Realistically, finding onself in a Gothic-setting is highly unlikely.

However, some of Catherine’s Gothic expectations do come true. For instance, she becomes alarmed by a mysterious chest near to the fireplace similar to the one Henry described (136). After struggling to open it, even being caught in the act by a maid-servant, Catherine finally opens the chest only to find a far-from-ghastly, white, cotton counterpane. A few nights later during a thunderstorm, Catherine discovers an old-fashioned black cabinet that also met Henry Tilney’s description. Frightened out of her wits and with her heart pounding, Catherine manages to open the cabinet to find “a roll of paper pushed back into the furthest part of the cavity, apparently for concealment” (140). This manuscript which caused Catherine so much alarm was merely a washing-bill (142). Once again, Jane Austen parodies the gothic novel and allows the potential gothic-plots to fall through to Catherine’s embarrassment.

The climax of this novel and Austen’s final statement about the unreality of Gothic-plot surrounds Catherine’s investigation of Mrs. Tilney’s room. After receiving a tour of the house from Eleanor and the General, Eleanor leads Catherine to “a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and symptoms of a winding staircase” (154). The General prevents Eleanor from showing Catherine the room, and this, to Catherine, suggests there is some deep-secret associated with the room that General Tilney wants to hide. It turns out that the room in question is the late Mrs. Tilney’s room. Catherine has suspicions about the circumstances of Mrs. Tilney’s death, for Eleanor was away from home at the time, and the General seems very adamant about preventing Catherine’s examination of it. This leads Catherine, who’s mind is already prone to Gothic-ideas, to believe that Mrs. Tilney may still be alive and held captive in her room. “Could it be possible?,” she wonders to herself, “Could Henry’s father?—And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions!–And then when she saw him in the evening, while she worked with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and attitude of a Montoni!” (155). Montoni is villain in Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho , and it is no coincidence that that Catherine makes the comparison between the two characters. The gothic novel, like Romanticism for Marianne, has shaped Catherine’s perception. While it is absurd and very unlikely, Catherine really believes General Tilney capable of imprisoning his wife!

A few nights later when the General retires to bed early to look at pamphlets, Catherine’s becomes even more suspicious. “To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets, was not very likely,” she notes. “There must be some deeper cause; something was to be done which could be done only when the household slept; and the probability which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed” (156). Assured that Mrs. Tilney is locked in her bedroom, Catherine decides to explore the room the next day when General Tilney is on his walk.

Catherine explores Mrs. Tilney’s room (See Climax and Dissolution of Gothic Plot ) only to find great disappointment, and even greater embarrassment. There is nothing out of the ordinary about the room, and contrary to what she thought, the room is not hidden –Henry Tilney enters it while walking from his stables to his room. Even worse, Henry dissolves Catherine’s suspicions about Mrs. Tilney being alive. Although Eleanor was away from home at the time, Henry was present when Mrs. Tilney died. Offended that Catherine could think that his father could harm his mother, Henry puts Catherine straight and tells her that the atrocities found in Gothic novels do not happen in England. Catherine has let herself be too swayed with what she has read, and as a result, has lost her sense of reality and passed judgment on an (at that point) blameless person. Catherine is ashamed at herself, and at this point, the final, potential, Gothic-plot is dissolved. The narrator concludes:

“Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the midland counties of England, was to be looked for . . . in the central part of England, there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not tolerated, servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist” (166).

This is Austen’s final statement on Gothic novels, and the end to which all of Catherine’s misadventures have led. While they may be entertaining, Gothic novels are an allegorical, not a realistic, reflection on life. To a person who cannot see the line between fact and fiction, Gothic novels can even be dangerous once innocent people get blamed for monstrous crimes they did not commit.

In Conclusion:

Both Marianne and Catherine must learn to be sensible, rational women in order to achieve happiness. Both must give up their Romantic fantasies and settle into an unspectacular, banal existence. This may lead one initially to believe (myself included) that Austen was opposed to Romanticism and more interested in realistic “daguerrotyped portraits of the commonplace.” However, I think Austen may have had other thoughts in mind– She admires Romanticism and the Gothic novel so long as they remain in their medium, but once their motifs leap off the page and into the minds of sensitive readers and alter their perceptions of reality, they become dangerous. Austen’s is neither Romantic nor Un-romantic; she is a Mock-Romantic. Austen creates Romantic plots only to satirize them, making her more like an Augustan Age writer than a Romantic one.

Works Cited: Images: Portrait of Jane Austen . 1873. Duyckinick, Evert A. Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women in Europe and America, New York. 4 May 2008 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen Hugh Thomson, “He cut off a long lock of hair.” Project Gutenberg. 31 May 2008 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/3/21839/21839-h/21839-h.htm

Biographical Information: About Jane Austen- Her Life and Her Novels.” Jane Austen Society of Australia . 4 May 2008 http://www.jasa.net.au/jabiog.htm “Biography: Life (1775-1817) and Family). The Republic of Pemberley . 4 May 2008 http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janelife.html “Jane Austen’s Art and her Literary Reputation.” The Republic of Pemperley . 28 May 2008 http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeart.html “Jane Austen Biography.” Literature Post . 4 May 2008 http://www.literaturepost.com/authors/Austen.html

Jane Austen and Romanticism: Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey . New York: Modern Library: 2002. Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. In The Works of Jane Austen . Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Classics, 2000.

Information on the Gothic Novel: Melani, Lilia. “The Gothic Experience.” Brooklyn College Website . 24 Oct. 2002. 30 May 2008 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/gothic.html De Vore, David, Anne Domenic, Alexandra Kwan, and Nicole Reidy. “The Gothic Novel.” University of California Davis . 30 May 2008 http://cai.ucdavis.edu/waters-sites/gothicnovel/155breport.html

Jane Austen: Life and Background

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• Raymond Wilson  

Part of the book series: Macmillan Master Guides ((PMG))

Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire of middle-class parents. George Austen, her father, was an Oxford graduate without personal fortune. He supplemented his income as rector of Steventon by taking pupils, alongside whom he would teach his own children. As the seventh child in the family, Jane was educated in part by her older brothers, two of whom were to become clergymen, while two others rose to the rank of admiral in the Navy, and yet another, Edward, was through adoption made a member of the landed gentry. The wide range of activities within the Austen family — country walks, charades, reading, writing stories and family plays — constituted a rich informal education for the children, and stimulated Jane Austen’s ambition to become a novelist. Her formal education at boarding schools in Oxford, Southampton and Reading was certainly brief and relatively unimportant.

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Wilson, R. (1985). Jane Austen: Life and Background. In: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Macmillan Master Guides. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07480-8_1

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Jane Austen Biography

It is said that Jane Austen lived a quiet life. Only a few of her manuscripts remain in existence and the majority of her correspondence was either burned or heavily edited by her sister, Cassandra, shortly before she died. As a result, the details that are known about her are rare and inconsistent. What can be surmised through remaining letters and personal acquaintances is that she was a woman of stature, humor and keen intelligence. Family remembrances of Austen portray her in a kind, almost saintly light, but critics who have studied her books and the remnants of her letters believe she was sharper than her family wished the public to think.

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on December 16, 1775 and grew up in a tight-knit family. She was the seventh of eight children, with six brothers and one sister. Her parents, George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, were married in 1764. Her father was an orphan but with the help of a rich uncle he attended school and was ordained by the Church of England. Subsequently, he was elevated enough in social standing to provide Cassandra a worthy match whose family was of a considerably higher social status. In 1765, they moved to Steventon, a village in north Hampshire, about 60 miles southwest of London, where her father was appointed rector.

Like their father, two of Austen’s older brothers, James and Henry, were ordained and spent most of their lives in the Church of England. Of all her brothers, Austen was closest to Henry; he served as her agent, and then after her death, as her biographer. George, the second oldest son, was born mentally deficient and spent the majority of his life in institutions. The third son, Edward, was adopted by their father’s wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight, and eventually inherited the Knight estate in Chawton, where Austen would later complete most of her novels. Cassandra, Austen’s only sister, was born in 1773. Austen and Cassandra were close friends and companions throughout their entire lives. It is through the remaining letters to Cassandra that biographers are able to piece Austen’s life together. The two youngest Austen boys, Francis and Charles, both served in the Navy as highly decorated admirals.

When Austen was 7, she and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to attend school but sometime later the girls came down with typhus and were brought back to Steventon. When Austen was 9 they attended the Abbey School in Reading. Shortly after enrolling however, the girls were withdrawn, because their father could no longer afford tuition. Though this completed their formal schooling, the girls continued their education at home, with the help of their brothers and father.

The Austens often read aloud to one another. This evolved into short theatrical performances that Austen had a hand in composing. The Austen family plays were performed in their barn and were attended by family members and a few close neighbors. By the age of 12, Austen was writing for herself as well as for her family. She wrote poems and several parodies of the dramatic fiction that was popular at the time, such as History of England and Love and Freindship [sic]. She then compiled and titled them: Volume the First , Volume the Second and Volume the Third .

Austen is said to have looked like her brother Henry, with bright hazel eyes and curly hair, over which she always wore a cap. She won the attention of a young Irish gentleman named Tom Lefroy. Unfortunately, Lefroy was in a position that required him to marry into money. He later married an heiress and became a prominent political figure in Ireland.

In 1795, when she was 20, Austen entered a productive phase and created what was later referred to as her “First Trilogy.” Prompted by increasing social engagements and flirtations, she began writing Elinor and Marianne , a novel in letters, which would eventually be reworked and retitled Sense and Sensibility . The following year, she wrote First Impressions , which was rejected by a publisher in 1797. It was the first version of Pride and Prejudice . She began another novel in 1798, titled Susan , which evolved into Northanger Abbey .

The Austens lived happily in Steventon until 1801, when her father suddenly announced he was moving the family to Bath. Austen was unhappy with the news. At the time, Bath was a resort town for the nearly wealthy with many gossips and social climbers. As they traveled that summer, however, she fell in love with a young clergyman who promised to meet them at the end of their journey. Several months later he fell ill and died.

Bath was difficult for Austen. She started but did not finish The Watsons and had a hard time adjusting to social demands. She accepted a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the son of an old family friend, but changed her mind the next day. A few years later, in 1805, her father died, leaving Jane, Cassandra and their mother without enough money to live comfortably. As a result, the Austen women relied on the hospitality of friends and family until they were permanently relocated to a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, belonging to her brother Edward Austen-Knight. There, Austen began the most productive period of her life, publishing several books and completing her “Second Trilogy.”

Austen finished the final drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in 1811. They were published shortly after and she immediately set to work on Mansfield Park . In 1814, Mansfield Park was published and Emma was started. By this time, Austen was gaining some recognition for her writing, despite the fact that neither Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice were published under her name.

Austen began showing symptoms of illness while she worked on Persuasion , her last completed novel. It was published with Northanger Abbey after her death. Unknown at the time, Austen most likely suffered from Addison’s disease, whose symptoms include fever, back pain, nausea and irregular skin pigmentation. On her deathbed, when asked by her sister Cassandra if there was anything she required, she requested only “death itself.” She died at the age of 41 on July 18, 1817 with her sister at her side.

Jane Austen’s Enduring Popularity

When asked why Jane Austen’s works are so popular, Richard Jenkyns, author of A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen and descendant of Austen’s older brother, said: “I don’t think it’s nostalgia for the past and all those empire-line dresses and britches tight on the thigh, all that sort of thing. I guess that she is popular because she is modern… I think her popularity is in her representing a world, in its most important aspects, that we know.”

Although living in a world that seems remote in time and place, Jane Austen’s characters have experiences and emotions that are familiar to us. They misjudge people based on appearances, they’re embarrassed by their parents, they flirt and they fall in love. Her characters face social restrictions that can be translated into any environment, from a California high school in Clueless to an interracial romance in Bride and Prejudice . The critical and commercial success of the numerous recent film and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, including nine of Pride and Prejudice , testifies to her timeless and universal appeal. Yet they fail to fully capture the genius of her writing. She was a great writer, a sharp wit and a wonderful satirist.

Takeoffs of Austen’s work, such as Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless , have been huge successes. A number of sequels to Pride and Prejudice have been written such as Lady Catherine’s Necklace by Joan Aiken; Mr. Darcy’s Daughters by Elizabeth Aston; and Pemberley: or Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant. Other novels such as Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and Kate Fenton’s Vanity and Vexation: A Novel of Pride and Prejudice have contemporary settings using Austen’s characters or plots.

In The Eye of the Story , Eudora Welty wrote that Austen’s novels withstand time because “they pertain not to the outside world but to the interior, to what goes on perpetually in the mind and heart.” Perhaps, for these reasons, Austen’s work continues to fascinate, entertain and inspire us.

• Tucker, George Holbert. Jane Austen the Woman . St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
• Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen and Her World . Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
• “Jane Austen.” Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 3: Writers of the Romantic Period, 1789-1832 . Gale Research, 1992.

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Introduction

Getting started: guides and encyclopedias, ready reference sources, bibliography, literary criticism, indexes & abstracts, internet resources.

Author : Jane Austen

• 1.1.1 Posthumous
• 1.1.2 Fragments and unfinished fiction
• 1.2 Other works
• 1.3 Letters
• 1.4 Juvenilia
• 1.5 Collected works
• 2 Works about Austen

Works [ edit ]

• The Novels of Jane Austen edited by R. W. Chapman (transcription volumes: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 )

Novels [ edit ]

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813) (First Edition 1813) (transcription volumes: 1 , 2 , 3 )
• Mansfield Park (1814) (Second Edition 1816) ( transcription project )
• Emma (1816)

Posthumous [ edit ]

• Northanger Abbey (1818)
• Cancelled Chapter of Persuasion
• Lady Susan (1934) ( transcription project )

Fragments and unfinished fiction [ edit ]

• The Watsons (1793–5, published in 1871) ( transcription project )
• Plan of a Novel (c.1815) ( transcription project )
• Sanditon (1817, published in 1925)

Other works [ edit ]

• Sir Charles Grandison , or, the Happy Man (play, 1800)
• Jane Austen Poems
• Jane Austen Prayers

Letters [ edit ]

• Letters of Jane Austen ( transcription project )

Juvenilia [ edit ]

• Frederic & Elfrida
• Jack & Alice
• Edgar & Emma
• Henry and Eliza
• The Adventures of Mr. Harley
• Sir William Mountague
• Memoirs of Mr. Clifford
• The Beautifull Cassandra (1788)
• Amelia Webster
• The Mystery
• The Three Sisters
• A Beautiful Description
• The Generous Curate
• Ode to Pity
• Love and Freindship
• Lesley Castle: An unfinished Novel in Letters
• The History of England
• Collection of Letters
• The Female Philosopher
• The First Act of a Comedy
• A Letter from a Young Lady
• A Tour through Wales
• Catharine, or the Bower

Collected works [ edit ]

• Love and Freindship and other early works ; Now First Published from the Original Ms. By Jane Austen with a Preface By G. K. Chesterton. New York: Stokes and Co. 1922

Works about Austen [ edit ]

• " Jane Austen ," in Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition (1875–1889)
• " Austen, Jane ," in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)
• " Austen, Jane ," in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature , by John William Cousin , London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1910)
• " Austen, Jane ," in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 , London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1885–1900) in 63 vols.
• Jane Austen's Juvenilia by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
• A Memoir of Jane Austen , 1869 by James Edward Austen-Leigh, ( transcription project )

Some or all works by this author were published before January 1, 1929, and are in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. Translations or editions published later may be copyrighted. Posthumous works may be copyrighted based on how long they have been published in certain countries and areas.

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