|
|
Jane was born in Steventon, Hampshire, into a family of eight children headed by her father,
George Austen, Rector of Steventon and Deane, the livings of which had been purchased by Thomas
Knight, the husband of his second cousin, and his wealthy uncle, Francis Austen.
From 1773 to 1796 George eked a living from farming and teaching boys boarded at his house. Jane
developed close relations with her only sister, Cassandra, both of whom were educated in 1783 at
the home of Ann Cawley at Oxford. She contracted typhus but survived for them to attend Reading
Abbey Girl's School from 1785 to 1786. The unaffordable fees forced their return to home
schooling where Jane had the freedom to write indulged with a plentiful supply of paper.
She joined in amateur theatricals at home, wrote poems and plays and numerous juvenile works. At
the age of twenty, she was attracted to Tom Lefroy who would later become Chief Justice of Ireland,
but at that stage in life, a penniless marriage could not be contemplated.
She wrote Elinor and Mariane, later renamed Sense and Sensibility in 1811, adapting an earlier
epistolary format. In 1796-1797, she wrote First Impressions, later renamed as Pride and Prejudice.
Her father resigned his post in 1800 and moved the family to Bath where Jane spent less time
writing possibly owing to the greater activity available in the town. Her numerous letters to her
sister Cassandra at that time were unaccountably destroyed by her.
Jane visited friends in 1802 at Manydown Park near Basingstoke where she received a proposal of
marriage from their brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, which she accepted but retracted next day presumed
to be upon consideration of a lack of affection.
Her father died in 1805 which plunged the family into a period of hardship but in 1809, following
an offer by her brother Edward, the family moved to a cottage in Chawton where she lived for almost
all the rest of her life. She was able to lead a quieter life in which she turned again to writing
and, having been advised by the Prince Regent's librarian, she included a dedication to the
prince in her next book, Emma.
With the onset of her final illness in 1816 she moved to Winchester where she died possibly of
Addison's Disease or Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
Jane has remained a highly regarded author of romantic literature which stressed repressed emotion
and happy endings within amusing and ironic social comment, but her poetry has taken an undeserved
subordinate role.
|
