biografía

Biography

Jane Austen was a major English novelist, whose brilliantly witty, elegantly
structured satirical fiction marks the transition in English literature from 18th
century neo-classicism to 19th century romanticism.

Jane Austen was born on 16 December, 1775, at the rectory in the village of
Steventon, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire. The seventh of eight children of the
Reverend George Austen and his wife, Cassandra, she was educated mainly at
home and never lived apart from her family. She had a happy childhood amongst all
her brothers and the other boys who lodged with the family and whom Mr Austen
tutored. From her older sister, Cassandra, she was inseparable. To amuse
themselves, the children wrote and performed plays and charades, and even as a
little girl Jane was encouraged to write. The reading that she did of the books in her
father's extensive library provided material for the short satirical sketches she
wrote as a girl.

At the age of 14 she wrote her first novel, Love and Freindship (sic) and then A
History of England by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian, together with
other very amusing juvenilia. In her early twenties Jane Austen wrote the novels
that were later to be re-worked and published as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and
Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. She also began a novel called The Watsons which
was never completed.

As a young woman Jane enjoyed dancing (an activity which features frequently in
her novels) and she attended balls in many of the great houses of the
neighbourhood. She loved the country, enjoyed long country walks, and had many
Hampshire friends. It therefore came as a considerable shock when her parents
suddenly announced in 1801 that the family would be moving away to Bath. Mr
Austen gave the Steventon living to his son James and retired to Bath with his wife
and two daughters. The next four years were difficult ones for Jane Austen. She
disliked the confines of a busy town and missed her Steventon life. After her father's
death in 1805, his widow and daughters also suffered financial difficulties and were
forced to rely on the charity of the Austen sons. It was also at this time that, while
on holiday in the West country, Jane fell in love, and when the young man died, she
was deeply upset. Later she acccepted a proposal of marriage from Harris
Bigg-Wither, a wealthy landowner and brother to some of her closest friends, but
she changed her mind the next morning and was greatly upset by the whole
episode.

After the death of Mr Austen, the Austen ladies moved to Southampton to share
the home of Jane's naval brother Frank and his wife Mary. There were occasional
visits to London, where Jane stayed with her favourite brother Henry, at that time a
prosperous banker, and where she enjoyed visits to the theatre and art exhbitions.
However, she wrote little in Bath and nothing at all in Southampton.

Then, in July, 1809, on her brother Edward offering his mother and sisters a
permanent home on his Chawton estate, the Austen ladies moved back to their
beloved Hampshire countryside. It was a small but comfortable house, with a pretty
garden, and most importantly it provided the settled home which Jane Austen
needed in order to write. In the seven and a half years that she lived in this house,
she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and published them ( in
1811 and 1813) and then embarked on a period of intense productivity. Mansfield
Park came out in 1814, followed by Emma in 1816 and she completed Persuasion
(which was published together with Northanger Abbey in 1818, the year after her
death). None of the books published in her life-time had her name on them — they
were described as being written "By a Lady". In the winter of 1816 she started
Sanditon, but illness prevented its completion.

Jane Austen had contracted Addisons Disease, a tubercular disease of the
kidneys. No longer able to walk far, she used to drive out in a little donkey carriage
which can still be seen at the Jane Austen Museum at Chawton. By May 1817 she
was so ill that she and Cassandra, to be near Jane's physician, rented rooms in
Winchester. Tragically, there was then no cure and Jane Austen died in her sister's
arms in the early hours of 18 July, 1817. She was 41 years old. She is buried in
Winchester Cathedral.