1.1)HER CHILDHOOD
Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England. She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827.
In 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra went briefly to be taught by a Mrs. Cawley (the sister of one of their uncles), who lived first in Oxford and then moved to Southampton. They were brought home after an infectious disease broke out in Southampton.
In 1785-1786 Jane and Cassandra went to the Abbey boarding school in Reading, which apparently bore some resemblance to Mrs. Goddard's casual school in Emma. (Jane was considered almost too young to benefit from the school, but their mother is reported to have said that "if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too".) This was Jane Austen's only education outside her family. Within their family, the two girls learned drawing, to play the piano, etc. she was very familiar with eighteenth century novels, such as those of Fielding and Richardson, which were much less inhibited than those of the later (near-)Victorian era. She frequently reread Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, and also enjoyed the novels of Fanny Burney (a.k.a. Madame D'Arblay). She later got the title for Pride and Prejudice from a phrase in Burney's Cecilia, and when Burney's Camilla came out in 1796, one of the subscribers was "Miss J. Austen, Steventon". The three novels that she praised in her famous "Defense of the Novel" in Northanger Abbey were Burney's Cecilia and Camilla, and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda.
In 1782 and 1784, plays were staged
by the Austen family at Steventon rectory, and in 1787-1788 more elaborate
productions were put on there under the influence of Jane's sophisticated
grown-up cousin Eliza de Feuillide (to whom Love and Freindship is dedicated).
This throws an interesting light on Jane Austen's apparent disapproval
of such amateur theatricals in her novel Mansfield Park (though Mansfield
Park was written over twenty years afterwards, in a moral climate closer
to the Victorian era; also, in 1788 one Charlotte Anne Frances Wattell
eloped to Scotland with a son of the scandal-plagued Twistleton family,
remotely connected by marriage with Jane Austen's family -- Mr. Twistleton
and Miss Wattell had been acting together in amateur theatricals)
1.2)AUSTEN
FAMILY
Jane's eldest brother James (1765-1819) was studious, went away to Oxford university at the age of 14 in 1779, and was ordained a clergyman in 1787. He had some literary pretensions and in 1789-1790 edited a university magazine at Oxford called The Loiterer, which ran for sixty issues. He took on the duties of the Steventon parish after his father's retirement. His second wife, Mary Lloyd, was not a favorite of Jane Austen's.
Henry (1771-1850) was Jane Austen's favorite brother; he was witty and enthusiastic in whatever he did, but not always successful. He entered Oxford University in 1788, married Eliza de Feuillide (who died in 1813), and eventually ended up as a Calvinist-leaning minister, after a business bankruptcy in 1815. He saw Jane Austen's novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey through the press after her death. Cassandra Elizabeth (1773-1845) was Jane Austen's only sister, and her closest confidante. Over a hundred letters from Jane Austen to Cassandra have survived, giving us our most intimate look at some of the details of Jane Austen's life. Cassandra's fiancé Thomas Fowle died of yellow fever in the Caribbean in 1797; he had gone there as a military chaplain. Possibly Cassandra's experience is reflected in Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft's abomination of "long engagements" and "uncertain engagements" in Jane Austen's Persuasion.
Frank (1774-1865) and Charles (1779-1852)
both entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth at the age of 12, fought
in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, and both eventually rose
to become admirals. (Nelson once called Frank Austen "an excellent young
man".) This naval connection influenced Jane's novels Mansfield Park and
Persuasion. Frank was away at sea in the Far East from age 14 to 18.
1.3)EARLY
ADULTHOOD AT STEVENTON AND BATH
Jane Austen enjoyed social events, and her early letters tell of dances and parties she attended in Hampshire, and also of visits to London, Bath, Southampton etc., where she attended plays and such. In 1795-6, she had a mutual flirtation with Thomas Lefroy (an Irish relative of Jane Austen's close older friend Mrs. Anne Lefroy). On January 14th and 15th 1796, when she was 20, she wrote (somewhat sarcastically), in a letter to Cassandra:
"Tell Mary that I make over Mr.
Heartley and all his estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future,
and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she
can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean
to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care sixpence.
Assure her also, as a last and indisputable proof of Warren's indifference
to me, that he actually drew that gentleman's picture for me, and delivered
it to me without a sigh.
Friday. -- At length the day is
come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive
this it will be over. My tears flow at the melancholy idea."
However, it was always known that he couldn't afford to marry Jane.(Many years later, after he had become Chief Justice of Ireland, he confessed to his nephew that he had had a "boyish love" for Jane Austen.) A year later, Mrs. Lefroy (who had disapproved of her nephew Tom's conduct towards Jane) tried to fix Jane Austen up with the Rev. Samuel Blackall, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but Jane wasn't very interested.In late 1800 her father, who was nearly 70, suddenly decided to retire to Bath (which would not have been Jane Austen's choice), and the family moved there the next year.
During the years in Bath,
the family went to the sea-side every summer, and it was while on one of
those holidays that Jane Austen's most mysterious romantic incident occurred.
All that is known is what Cassandra told various nieces, years after Jane
Austen's death, and nothing was written down until years after that. While
the family were staying somewhere on the coast (probably in south Devonshire,
west of Lyme), Jane Austen met a young man who seemed to Cassandra to have
quite fallen in love with Jane; Cassandra later spoke highly of him, and
thought he would have been a successful suitor.
According to Caroline "They parted
-- but he made it plain he should seek them out again"; however, shortly
afterwards they instead heard of his death! There is no evidence as to
how seriously this disappointment affected Jane Austen, but a number of
people have wondered whether or not Jane Austen's 1817 novel Persuasion
might not reflect this experience to some degree, with life transmuted
into art; Jane Austen would have been 27 (the age of Anne Elliot, the heroine
of Persuasion) during 1802-1803, and a crucial scene in Persuasion takes
place in Lyme.
A more clearly-known incident occurred on December 2nd. 1802, when Jane Austen and Cassandra were staying with the Bigg family at Manydown, near Steventon. Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years younger than herself, proposed to Jane, and she accepted, though she did not love him. However, the next day she thought better of it, and she and Cassandra showed up unexpectedly at Steventon (where their brother James was now the clergyman), insisting they be taken out of the neighbourhood to Bath the next day. This was socially embarrassing, but her heart does not seem to have been seriously affected -- Mr. Bigg-Withers, though prosperous, was "big and awkward".
Notoriously, none of Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra from June 1801 to August 1804, in which she probably would have alluded to these incidents, have been preserved. In the end, Jane Austen (like Cassandra), never married.In 1803 Jane Austen actually sold Northanger Abbey (then titled Susan) to a publisher, however, the publisher chose not to publish it (and it did not actually appear in print until fourteen years later). It was probably toward the end of the Bath years that Jane Austen began The Watsons, but this novel was abandoned in fragmentary form.
In January 1805 her father died.
As would have been the case for the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice if Mr.
Bennet had died, the income due to the remaining family was considerably
reduced -- since most of Mr. Austen's income had come from clerical "livings"
which lapsed with his death. Later in 1805, Martha Lloyd (sister of James
Austen's wife) came to live with Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, and Jane, after
her own mother had died.
1.4)MATURITY
IN SOUTHAMPTON AND CHAWTON
In 1806 they moved from Bath, first to Clifton, and then, in autumn 1806, to Southampton. Two years later, Jane remembered (in a letter to Cassandra) with "what happy feelings of Escape!" she had left Bath. Southampton was conveniently near to the navy base of Portsmouth and the naval brothers Frank and Charles.
In 1809 Jane Austen, her mother, sister Cassandra, and Martha Lloyd moved to Chawton, near Alton and Winchester, where her brother Edward provided a small house on one of his estates. This was in Hampshire, not far from her childhood home of Steventon. Before leaving Southampton, she corresponded with the dilatory publisher to whom she had sold Susan (i.e. Northanger Abbey), but without receiving any satisfaction.
She resumed her literary activities soon after returning into Hampshire, and revised Sense and Sensibility, which was accepted in late 1810 or early 1811 by a publisher, for publication at her own risk.She had already started work on Mansfield Park by 1812, and worked on it during 1813. It was during 1813 that knowledge of her authorship started to spread outside her family; as Jane Austen wrote in a letter of September 25th 1813: "Henry heard P. & P. warmly praised in Scotland, by Lady Robert Kerr & another Lady; -- & and what does he do in the warmth of his brotherly vanity and Love, but immediately tell them who wrote it!".
In May 1814, Mansfield Park appeared, and was sold out in six months; she had already started work on Emma. Her brother Henry, who then conveniently lived in London, often acted as Jane Austen's go-between with publishers, and on several occasions she stayed with him in London to revise proof-sheets. In October 1813, one of the Prince Regent´s physicians was brought in to treat an illness that Henry was suffering from; it was through this connection that Jane Austen was brought into contact with Mr. Clarke.
At Steventon she and Cassandra had had a private "dressing room" next to their bedroom (in the later years, after their brothers had mainly moved out), which she used to write her Juvenilia and early versions of her first three novels in relative privacy. At Chawton, she didn't have any such study, and James Edward tells the story of the famous creaking door, which Jane Austen requested not be fixed, since it gave her warning of any approaching visitors, so that she could hide her manuscript before they came into the room.
In addition to her literary work, she often visited her brothers and their families, and other relatives and friends, and they sometimes came to Southampton or Chawton. She had a reputation for being able to keep young children entertained, and was also attached to her oldest nieces Fanny and Anna.
In December 1815 Emma appeared,
dedicated to the Prince Regent. A second edition of Masfield Park appeared
in February 1816, but was not a sales success; her losses on the reprint
of Mansfield Park ate up most of her initial profits on Emma.
She had started on Persuasion in
August 1815, and finished it in August 1816 -- although during 1816 she
was becoming increasingly unwell. In early 1816 her brother Henry´s
business went bankrupt.
In early 1817 she started work on
another novel, Sandition, but had to give it up in March. On April 27th
she made her will (leaving almost everything to Casandra), and on May 24
she was moved to Winchester for medical treatment. She died there on Friday,
July 18th 1817, aged 41. It was not known then what had caused her death,
but it seems likely that it was Addison's disease.
She was buried in Winchester Cathedral
on July 24th 1817 (at that time, so we are told, women did not usually
attend funerals -- three years afterwards, Victoria's mother was not allowed
to attend her husband's funeral -- so Cassandra was not present).
The novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were readied for the press by Henry, and published posthumously at the end of 1817 in a combined edition of four volums. As with the earlier novels, Jane Austen's name did not appear on the title page (which simply says "By the author of `Pride and Prejudice ', ``Mansfield Park ", &c"), but the work did contain a "Biographical Notice of the Author" by Henry, written in much as the same tone as the epitaph, which for the first time identified Jane Austen as the author.
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