JANE AUSTEN'S  BIOGRAPHY

Jane Austen was born 16 December 1775 at
Steventon Parish, Hampshire, England. She was the
seventh child and second daughter of the Rev. George
Austen and Cassandra Leigh-Austen. Jane was
devoted to her older sister, Cassandra-Elizabeth, and
eventually wrote enough letters to her to choke a
horse. When Cassandra, age 10, was sent away to
school in Oxford1, Jane begged to be sent along with
her even though she was too young. Mr. Austen,
however, couldn't really afford their schooling and the
girls were back home after less than three years. Apart
from this, Jane never lived outside of her family circle
again2. She ended up very well-educated for a female,
though. Her oldest brother James helped her out by
organizing reading lists for her, and Jane could lay
claim to a good knowledge of history as well as a little
Latin, Italian and musical training.

It was 1787 when Jane made the decision to devote all
her spare time to writing. This early work made three
volumes of Juvenilia, and you can see all that satire
just dying to come out. In 1791, she wrote a parody of
Oliver Goldsmith's History of England. A few years
later, when she was only about nineteen, she started
work on Lady Susan, an epistolary3 novel which was
Jane's first attempt at a serious theme. It didn't work
well in the format she used, but it was good enough to
encourage her to keep going. She began another
epistolary novel in 1795, which was titled Elinor and
Marianne4, and 1796 saw the beginning of First
Impressions5.

But don't think it was all work for Jane. Like any
single young lady back then, she went to dances,
properly escorted of course, and flirted decorously
with eligible young men. Cassandra had become
engaged to Tom Fowle, a local clergyman, in 1795.
Two years later, Tom's patron, Lord Craven, who had
just purchased a colonelcy in the West Indies, asked
Tom to go there as his private chaplain, and Tom felt
he didn't dare refuse. Unfortunately, Tom died of
yellow fever, and Cassandra slid into quiet
spinsterhood6 with her sister.

In August of 1797, Jane submitted First Impressions,
as it was still known, for publication, and it was turned
down firmly. Jane was not surprised or disappointed;
she'd only sent it in because her entire family was
telling her to. She knew it wasn't any good7. She
spent the next two years rewriting Elinor and
Marianne into Sense and Sensibility and starting work
on Susan8. In 1800 she took a break and went to visit
an in-law. She returned home to learn that her home
was moving to Bath. Though naturally a bit
disconcerted, Jane soon adjusted to the idea of
moving, especially since it was probably meant to
improve her parents' health. Also around this time,
Jane paid her first visit to the Bigg-Wither9 family and
met the reasonably young, moderately wealthy Harris
Bigg-Wither. About a year later, when Jane visited the
family again in early December 1802, Harris proposed
to Jane and she accepted. But before you start
scratching your head and trying to figure out why she
isn't known to posterity as Jane Bigg-Wither10, know
that Jane changed her mind the very next morning11.
Now this was really something of a scandal. Jane and
Cassandra, who was also visiting, fled to their brother
James' house (actually their old house) and demanded
to be escorted to Bath immediately12, where Jane had
to lay low until everything blew over.

Somewhere around early 1804, Jane started another
novel called The Watsons, but when Jane's father died
on 21 January 1805, she set the novel aside in her
grief and never returned to it. Jane and her mother
were now exceedingly poor13. Three of the boys in
the family chipped in to arrange an annual income and
lodgings for the ladies, but Jane's letters of the time
hint that she was depressed at the restrictions of her
finances. So it was probaly out of desparation that she
sent off one of her manuscripts to a publisher. In
1810, Sense and Sensibility was accepted for
publication on commission, meaning the printing costs
would be paid by the author. Jane, expecting to lose
money, only agreed reluctantly, but the novel sold
briskly and gave Jane a profit of about 140. Jane,
knowing a good thing when she saw it, started work
on Mansfield Park and sold Pride and Prejudice for
publication in 1812. By the next year, it was the
fashionable novel in England14, and Mansfield Park
was published and selling right along.

In November of 1815, Jane discovered she had fans in
high places. People had finally realized who she was,
thanks to her brother Henry, who had begun sharing
her identity with his friends and acquaintances, and
their friends and acquaintances, etc., until even the
Prince Regent, who owned enough copies of each of
Jane's novels to stock all his residences, knew who she
was. He sent Jane, through his chief librarian, royal
permission to dedicate any forthcoming novel to His
Royal Highness. Jane, like 99% of the British
population at the time15, greatly disapproved of the
Prince Regent and made up her mind to ignore this
permission. Fortunately, several of her relatives rightly
interpreted this permission as a command, and Emma,
published in 1815, was duly dedicated to the spoiled,
spendthrift Prince.

Jane's health was beginning to fail by now. In her
quest to tie up loose ends, she now repurchased the
manuscript of Susan(Northanger Abbey) from the
publishers who'd bought it for 10 back in 1803 and
then ignored it. Once the purchase, conducted through
an intermediary, was complete, Jane took great
pleasure in informing the publishers that the
manuscript was by the renowned author of Pride and
Prejudice, etc. There is unfortunately no record of the
publishers' reactions to this news.

Though she began another novel during a period of
remission, Jane's health was very poor. She probably
had the then-unnamed Addison's Disease, which
attacks the adrenal glands and is still incurable today.
In April of 1817, Jane quietly made her will, guessing
in spite of all the doctors' reassurances that she would
not live long, and left everything, except two small
bequests, to her beloved Cassandra. She died early on
the morning of 18 July 1817, with Cassandra at her
side. In December of that year, her chatty brother
Henry arranged the publication of Northanger Abbey
and Persuasion, which she'd finished in August 1816,
with the first official acknowledgement of Jane's
authorship on the title pages16. The heroine of
Persuasion, incidentally, was Anne Elliot, who many
of her relatives and friends seemed to think was most
like Jane herself in temperament. Just didn't want to
leave you all wondering about the nickname.

                   Austen-Leigh, William, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, and Deirdre LeFaye, ed. Jane Austen: A Family Record. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.