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Jane Austen page
Jane
Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire. She was the
penultimate of 8 children born to the Reverend George 
Austen
and his wife Cassandra. Jane had 6 brothers and 1 sister, also named Cassandra,
who was 3 years older than her and whom she idolised. Jane received a great
deal more schooling than was common for girls in that era. Indeed, when she was
first tutored at the age of 8, she was considered too young to go to school,
but Jane always wanted to do whatever Cassandra did. Both her parents were avid
readers, and her father had a library of over 500 books. Many of these books
were the popular entertainments of the time, which were far less restrained in
topic and etiquette than when Jane Austen herself was writing. Many of these
were the Gothic novels that Jane lampooned in the first novel she wrote,
“Susan”. This novel would later be titled “Northanger
Abbey”, published after Jane’s death. This was despite the fact that Jane
had sold the novel to a publisher as early as 1803.
Although the subject matter of many of her novels was
marriage, Jane Austen famously did not marry. She did come close many
times. Her sister Cassandra said
that she had met one eligible man on holiday near Lyme, who had promised to
seek her out again. However, the next Jane Austen heard of him was that he had
died. There is speculation that this incident may have formed part of the inspiration
for her novel “Persuasion”. Prior to that, Jane and Thomas Lefroy
had become enamoured of each other, but nothing ever came of this, as he was
too poor to marry her at this stage.
It was only many years later that he became Chief Justice of Ireland.
Jane did accept a proposal of marriage in 1802 from Harris Bigg-Whither, who
was 6 years younger than her, but she changed her mind about this overnight.
The previous year, Jane Austen’s world was somewhat shaken
up by her father’s decision to retire in Bath. Although many episodes in her novels occurred at Bath,
Jane didn’t actually enjoy living in the town, and missed the Hampshire
countryside. When her father died
in 1805, Jane and her mother and Cassandra (also unmarried), had to be
supported by her brothers. In
1806, they moved to Southampton to be near her brothers Frank and Charles, who
became admirals in the navy. In
1809, they were offered a cottage on one of her brother Edward’s estates in
Chawton. Jane was delighted to be back in Hampshire, and embarked upon writing
once more. “Sense and
Sensibility” was published in 1811 anonymously (“By a Lady”), as
gentlewomen were not encouraged to be authors in this era. “Pride and
Prejudice”, which Jane described as her “own darling child”, was published
in 1813. These first published novels were so successful that Jane Austen’s
authorship of them came to be known outside her own family circle, particularly
as the family themselves were proud of Jane’s accomplishments. “Mansfield
Park” was published in 1814. Jane’s brother Henry lived in London, as he
acted as her agent in her dealings with her publishers. “Emma”
was the next to be published in 1815.
She finished “Persuasion” in 1816, but about this time, she became
increasingly unwell. In 1817, she
moved to Winchester to be closer to her doctor, and this is where she died in
July of the same year in Cassandra’s arms. Thus it was that her last novel, “Sanditon”,
was never finished, while “Persuasion” was also published posthumously.
Emma – Project
Gutenberg ebook
Mansfield Park – Project
Gutenberg ebook
Northanger Abbey – Project
Gutenberg ebook
Persuasion – Project Gutenberg
ebook
Pride and Prejudice – Project
Gutenberg ebook
Sense and Sensibility – Project
Gutenberg ebook
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park versus Charlotte
Bronte’s Jane Eyre – Kevin Patrick Mahoney’s essay
The Jane Austen
homepage – contains several free Jane Austen essays
The Jane Austen Society of North
America – has annual Jane Austen essay competitions, and they publish the essays
for free online
The following
essays are in academic publications and may be available for you to read at
your college library. You usually have to pay to access these essays online
Kramp,
Michael "The Woman, the Gypsies, and England: Harriet Smith's National
Role"
College Literature - 31.1, Winter 2004, pp. 147-168
West Chester University
Gaull,
Marilyn "Jane Austen: Afterlives"
Eighteenth-Century Life - Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2004, pp. 113-124
Duke University Press
Deresiewicz,
William "Community and Cognition in Pride and Prejudice"
ELH - Volume 64, Number 2, Summer 1997, pp. 503-535
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Karounos,
Michael "Ordination and Revolution in Mansfield Park"
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 - Volume 44, Number 4, Autumn 2004,
pp. 715-736
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Gunn,
Daniel P. "Free Indirect Discourse and Narrative Authority in Emma"
Narrative - Volume 12, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 35-54
The Ohio State University Press
Gallop,
David "Jane Austen and the Aristotelian Ethic"
Philosophy and Literature - Volume 23, Number 1, April 1999, pp. 96-109
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Miller,
Christopher R. "Jane Austen's Aesthetics and Ethics of Surprise"
Narrative - Volume 13, Number 3, October 2005, pp. 238-260
The Ohio State University Press
Rohrbach,
Emily "Austen's Later Subjects"
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 - Volume 44, Number 4, Autumn 2004,
pp. 737-752
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Richardson,
Alan 1955- "Of Heartache and Head Injury: Reading Minds in
Persuasion"
Poetics Today - Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2002, pp. 141-160
Duke University Press
Cantor, Paul A. (Paul Arthur)
"A Class Act: Persuasion and the Lingering Death of the Aristocracy"
Philosophy and Literature - Volume 23, Number 1, April 1999, pp. 127-137
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Brodey,
Inger Sigrun "Adventures of a Female Werther: Jane Austen's Revision of
Sensibility"
Philosophy and Literature - Volume 23, Number 1, April 1999, pp. 110-126
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Ferguson,
Frances "Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form"
MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly - Volume 61, Number 1, March 2000, pp. 157-180
Duke University Press
Young,
Kay 1959- "Feeling Embodied: Consciousness, Persuasion, and Jane
Austen"
Narrative - Volume 11, Number 1, January 2003, pp. 78-92
The Ohio State University Press
Marsh,
Kelly A. "Contextualizing Bridget Jones"
College Literature - 31.1, Winter 2004, pp. 52-72
West Chester University
Favret,
Mary A. "Everyday War"
ELH - Volume 72, Number 3, Fall 2005, pp. 605-633
The John Hopkins University Press
Jager,
Colin "Mansfield Park and the End of Natural Theology"
MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly - Volume 63, Number 1, March 2002, pp. 31-63
Duke University Press
Edgecombe,
Rodney Stenning "Change and Fixity in Sense and Sensibility"
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 - Volume 41, Number 3, Summer 2001,
pp. 605-622
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Nachumi,
Nora ""I Am Elizabeth Bennet": Defining One's Self through
Austen's Third Novel"
Pedagogy - Volume 4, Issue 1, Winter 2004, pp. 119-124
Duke University Press
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