Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at the village of Steventon in Hampshire, the seventh child of the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. The Austens were gentry, somewhere between nobility and the professional classes. Two of her brothers were clergymen, another inherited rich estates in Kent and Hampshire from a distant cousin, and the two youngest became Admirals in the Royal Navy. Her only sister was Cassandra and, like Jane, she never married.

When they were small, Jane and Cassandra were sent to be tutored by Mrs. Cawley (the sister of one of their uncles), first at Oxford and later at Southampton, but they were brought home in 1783 after they both contracted typhus. In 1785, they briefly attended Mrs. La Tournelle’s Ladies’ Boarding School in Reading, Berkshire, also known as Abbey House school, but the fees proved too expensive for the rector to continue. From then on, the girls were educated at home. As well as the basics, Jane was taught music, singing and dancing, plus a little Italian and French. Jane was a prolific reader and soon began writing. Juvenilia were written from 1787 to 1793. They were originally written for the amusement of her family and include many humorous parodies of the literature of the day.

At 17, Jane ‘came out’. She enjoyed social events, and her early letters tell of dances and parties in Hampshire, and visits to London, Southampton and her aunt and uncle in Bath, where she attended plays and such. She also stayed with her brother Edward in his mansion at Godmersham Park near Canterbury, where she moved in higher social circles. Jane was both pretty and lively and enjoyed several flirtations. Her only serious relationship was Thomas Lefroy, who was younger than 20-year-old Jane. Tom needed to marry money and his family did not approve of the alliance, so he was sent to London to continue his studies. They never met again. (He eventually became Chief Justice of Ireland.) During the 1790s, she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. Their early working titles were Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions and Susan respectively. In 1803, she sold Northanger Abbey to a publisher for £10 though it did not appear in print until 14 years later. In 1801, Jane’s father retired. The family left Steventon and settled in Bath. The Austens rented No. 4 Sydney Place from 1801-1804, and then stayed for a few months at No. 3 Green Park Buildings East, where Mr. Austen died in 1805. While the Austens were based in Bath, they went on holidays to seaside resorts in the West Country, including Lyme Regis in Dorset (the background for Persuasion), where it is reputed that she fell in love with a young man who later died. Another famous incident occurred on 2 December 1802, when Jane and Cassandra were staying with the Bigg family at Manydown, near Steventon. Jane accepted a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years younger than her, but changed her mind the next day. She and Cassandra showed up unexpectedly at Steventon (where their brother James was now the clergyman), insisting they be taken back to Bath the next day.

In 1806, Mrs Austen and her daughters moved to Southampton (near Portsmouth where her naval brothers Frank and Charles were stationed), and then in 1809 to Chawton, where they had a cottage on one of Edward's Hampshire estates. Here Jane was at leisure to devote herself to writing, and between 1810-1817 she revised her three early novels and also composed another three – Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion.

Jane fell ill in 1816 – possibly with Addison's Disease – and in the summer of 1817 her family took her to Winchester for medical treatment. The doctor could do nothing for her, and she died peacefully on 18 July 1817 at their lodgings in No. 8 College Street. She is buried in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Several incomplete works were published long after Austen's death. These include The Watsons and Sanditon. Her correspondence has also been published.