Jane Austen

The English novelist Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, the seventh of eight children, in the Parsonage House of Steventon, Hampshire, where she spent her first twenty-five years. During her relatively brief lifetime Austen witnessed political unrest, revolution, war, and industrialization, yet these momentous events are not the central or explicit subjects of her finely focused novels. Rather, Austen wrote out of her immediate experience: the world of the country gentry and middle-class professional and business families. Jane’s father, the Reverend George Austen, was the well-read country rector of Steventon and her mother, Cassandra (nee Leigh), was descended from a well-connected line of learned clergymen. By no means wealthy, the Austens nonetheless enjoyed a comfortable and socially respectable life.

Jane and her beloved elder (and only) sister, Cassandra, were schooled in Southampton and Reading for short periods, but most of their education took place at home. Private theatrical performances in the barn at Steventon complemented Jane’s studies of French, Italian, history, music, and eighteenth-century fiction. An avid reader from earliest childhood, she began writing at age twelve, no doubt encouraged by her highly literate and affectionate family. Indeed, family and writing were her great loves. Despite a momentary engagement in 1802, Jane Austen never married. Her first two extended narratives, “Elinor and Marianne” and “First Impressions,” were written while she was at Steventon but were never published in their original form.

Following her father’s retirement, Jane moved in 1801 with her parents and sister to Bath. That popular watering hole, removed from the country life Jane preferred, presented the observant young writer with a wealth of events and experiences that would later be put to good use in her novels. Austen moved to Southampton with her mother and sister after the death of her father in 1805. Several years later the three women settled in Chawton Cottage in Hampshire, where Austen resided until the end of her life. She welcomed her return to the countryside and, with it, there came a renewed artistic vigor that led to the revision of her early novels. Sense and Sensibility, a reworking of “Elinor and Marianne,” was published in 1811, followed by Pride and Prejudice, a reworking of “First Impressions,” two years later.

Austen completed three more novels (Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) in the Chawton sitting room. Productive and discreet, she was not widely known to be the author of her published work. All of her novels were published anonymously, including the posthumous appearance, thanks to her brother Henry, of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

The last years of Austen’s life were relatively quiet and comfortable. Her final, unfinished work, Sanditon, was put aside in the spring of 1817, when her health sharply declined and she was taken to Winchester for medical treatment of what appears to have been Addison’s disease or a form of lymphoma. Jane Austen died there on July 18, 1817, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

The World of Jane Austen and Northanger Abbey

1775 The American Revolution begins in April. Jane Austen is born on December 16 in the Parsonage House in Steventon, Hampshire, England, the seventh of eight children (two girls and six boys) .

1778 Frances (Fanny) Burney publishes Evelina, a seminal work in the development of the novel of manners.

1781 German philosopher Immanuel Kant publishes the Cri tique of Pure Reason.

1782 The American Revolution ends. Fanny Burney’s novel Cecilia is published.

1783 Cassandra and Jane Austen begin their formal educa tion in Southampton, followed by study in Reading.

1788 King George III of England suffers his first attack of mental illness, leaving the country in a state of uncer tainty and anxiety. George Gordon, Lord Byron, is born.

1789 George III recuperates. The French Revolution begins. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence is published.

1791 American political writer Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man.

1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley is born. Mary Wollstonecraft pub lishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

1793 Europe is shocked by the execution of King Louis XVI of France and, some months later, his wife, Marie Antoinette; the Reign of Terror begins. England de clares war on France. Two of Austen’s brothers, Francis (1774-1865) and Charles (1779-1852), serve in the

Royal Navy, but life in the countryside at Steventon re mains relatively tranquil.

1795 Austen begins her first novel, “Elinor and Marianne,” written as letters (this early version is now lost); she will later revise the material as Sense and Sensibility. John Keats is born.

1796- 1797 Austen drafts a second novel, “First Impressions,” which was also never published; it will