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. Her parents were Reverend George Austen(1731-1805), he was the local Church of England clergyman, and his wife Cassandra(1739-1827). Jane Austen was educated at home mostly by her father until leaving for boarding school with her older sister Cassandra in early 1783. They 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. The activities and lessons probably included some French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music, and drama. By December 1786, Jane and Cassandra had returned home. Austen received the rest of her education by reading books, which was encouraged by her brothers and father. George Austen gave his daughters access to his large and varied library anytime, and was tolerant of Austen’s sometimes daring experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.
There is very little evidence of any serious relationships with men. In December 1795 through January 1796, when Austen was twenty one she fell in love with a man named Thomas Lefroy(a nephew of Jane Austen’s close older friend and neighbor, Anne Lefroy). He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London to train as a barrister(a British lawyer who speaks in the higher courts of law). Although it was always known that he couldn’t afford to marry Jane it is clear from Austen’s letters to her sister, Cassandra, that they spent a lot of time together. Their feelings for each other were strong and apparent to their friends and neighbors. The Lefroy family quickly sent Thomas away. From then on whenever he visited Hampshire, he was kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again. A year later, Mrs. Lefroy (who had disapproved of her nephew, Thomas’s relationship with Jane) tried to fix Austen up with the Reverend Samuel Blackall, but Jane wasn’t interested in him. Many years later, after Lefroy had become Chief Justice of Ireland, he confessed to his nephew that he had had a “boyish love” for Jane Austen.
During the period between 1793 and 1795, Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short novel, usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work. It is unlike any of Austen’s other stories. After finishing Lady Susan, Austen attempted her first full-length novel, Elinor and Marianne. Her sister Cassandra later remembered that it was read to the family sometime before 1796 and was told through a series of letters. Without any surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel published in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.
Austen began work on a second novel, First Impressions, in 1796 and completed the initial draft in August 1797 (it later became Pride and Prejudice).
During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third novel with the title Susan (which later became Northanger Abbey). Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen(Jane’s brother) offered Susan to Benjamin Crosby, a London publisher, who paid £10 for the copyright. Crosby promised early publication and advertised the book publicly, but did nothing else after that. The manuscript remained in Crosby’s hands, unpublished, until Austen repurchased the copyright from him in 1816.
In late 1800 her father, who was nearly 70, decided to retire to Bath, and the Austen family moved there the next year. During their time in Bath, the family went to the beach every summer, and it was while on one of these visits that Jane Austen met another man. All that is known is what Cassandra told various nieces, years after Jane Austen’s death, and nothing was written down for several years. While the family was staying somewhere on the coast Jane Austen met a young man who seemed to have quite fallen in love with her. Cassandra later spoke very fondly of him, and thought he would have been a successful suitor for Jane. According to Caroline “They parted, but he made it plain he should seek them out again”; however, shortly afterwards they heard of his death. There is no evidence as to how seriously this affected Jane, but Jane Austen’s 1817 novel Persuasion seems to reflect this experience. Jane Austen would have been 27, which was also the age of Anne Elliot, the heroine in Persuasion.
In 1803 Jane Austen sold Susan to a publisher, for the sum of £10. However, the publisher chose not to publish it (and it did not appear in print until fourteen years later). It was probably toward the end of Austen’s time in Bath that Jane Austen began The Watsons, but this novel was never finished and was left in fragmentary form.
In January 1805 Jane Austen’s father died. As would have been the case for the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice if Mr. Bennet had died, the income that was supposed to go to the remaining family (Mrs. Austen and her two daughters, the only children still at home) was reduced more than expected, since most of Mr. Austen’s income had come from clerical jobs, which lapsed with his death. So the family was largely dependent on support from the Austen brothers (and a very small amount of money left to Cassandra by her fiancé), summing to a total of about £450 a year. Later in 1805, Martha Lloyd (sister of Jane Austen’s mom) came to live with Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, and Jane, after her own mother had died.
Late in 1808 or early in 1809, Austen’s brother Edward offered his mother and sisters the use of a large “cottage” called Chawton House in Chawton village that was part of Edward’s nearby estate. Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved into Chawton cottage on 7 July 1809. In Chawton, life was quieter than it had been since the family’s move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialize with the neighbors and entertained only when family visited. Austen’s niece, Anna, described the Austen family’s life in Chawton as being a very quiet life, but they were great readers, and the housekeeping her aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in teaching some girl or boy to read or write.” Austen wrote almost daily, but privately, and seems to have had been relieved of some household chores to give her more time to write. In this environment, she was able to be productive as a writer once more.
During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen successfully published four novels, which were mostly well-received. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were good and the novel became fashionable among opinion-makers; the novel sold out by mid-1813. Austen’s earnings from Sense and Sensibility provided her with some financial and psychological independence. Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice (a revision of First Impressions) in January 1813. He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, receiving three favorable reviews and selling well. By October 1813, Egerton was able to begin selling a second edition. Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. While Mansfield Park was ignored by reviewers, it was a great success with the public. All copies were sold within six months, and Austen’s earnings on this novel were larger than any of her other novels earnings.
In mid-1815, Austen left Egerton for John Murray, a better known London publisher, who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816. Emma sold well but the new edition of Mansfield Park didn’t, and this failure offset most of the profits Austen earned on Emma. These were the last of Austen’s novels to be published during her lifetime.
While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began to write a new novel she titled The Elliots (later published as Persuasion). She completed her first draft in July 1816. Austen was forced to postpone publishing either of these completed novels by family financial troubles. Henry Austen’s bank failed in March 1816, depriving him of all of his assets, leaving him deeply in debt and losing Edward, James, and Frank Austen large sums. Henry and Frank could no longer afford the contributions they had made to support their mother and sisters.
Early in 1816, Jane Austen began to feel very ill. Austen ignored her illness at first and continued to work and to participate in the usual round of family activities. By the middle of 1816, her decline in health was unmistakable to Austen and to her family. Her cause of death is listed as Addison’s disease. However, her final illness has also been described as Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Austen continued to work in spite of her illness. She became dissatisfied with the ending of The Elliots and rewrote the final two chapters, finishing them on 6 August 1816. In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel she called The Brothers (later titled Sanditon for its first publication in 1925) and completed twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably because her illness prevented her from having the energy to continue. Austen made light of her condition to others, describing it as “Bile” and as rheumatism, but as her disease progressed she experienced increasing difficulty walking or finding the energy for other activities. By mid-April, Austen was confined to her bed. In May, their brother Henry escorted Jane and Cassandra to Winchester for medical treatment. Jane Austen died in Winchester on July 18, 1817. Jane’s brother, Henry, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph that was made by her brother, James, praises Austen’s personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation, mentions the “extraordinary endowments of her mind”, but does not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer.
After Austen’s death, Cassandra and Henry Austen along with Murray arranged for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set in December 1817. Henry Austen contributed a Biographical Note which for the first time identified his sister as the author of the novels. Tomalin describes it as “a loving and polished eulogy”. Sales were good for a year, only 321 copies remained unsold at the end of 1818, and then declined. Murray disposed of the remaining copies in 1820, and Austen’s novels remained out of print for twelve years. In 1832, Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of Austen’s novels and, beginning in either December 1832 or January 1833, published them in five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, Bentley published the first collected edition of Austen’s works. From that time until today, Austen’s novels have been continuously in print.
One finishes her novels wanting more and wishing it was never going to end. Which makes Austen one of the best authors of all time. It has been almost 200 years since Austen’s death and people all around the world continue to buy and read her novels. It is very rare when you find an author whose novels continue to print and sell after that long and Jane Austen’s novels are sure to continue on for a long time.