182- ] English Literature
Jane Austen
Jane
Austen (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːstɪn/ OST-in, AW-stin; (born December 16 , 1775, Steventon,
Hampshire, England—died July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire) was an English
novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret,
critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th
century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for
the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are
an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the
18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.
Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her
acclaim among critics and scholars .
The
anonymously published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), were a modest success but brought her
little fame in her lifetime. She wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1817—and began another, eventually
titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three
volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady
Susan, and the unfinished novel The Watsons.
Since
her death Austen's novels have rarely been out of print. A significant
transition in her reputation occurred in 1833, when they were republished in
Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series (illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering
and sold as a set). They gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership.
In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir
of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and
supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience. Her work has inspired a large
number of critical essays and has been included in many literary anthologies.
Her novels have also inspired many films, including 1940's Pride and Prejudice,
1995's Sense and Sensibility and 2016's Love & Friendship.
Jane
Austen English writer who first gave the
novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people
in everyday life. She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and
Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma
(1815). In these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published together
posthumously, 1817), she vividly depicted English middle-class life during the
early 19th century. Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners, but they
also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular successes for
over two centuries after her death. These works reflect her enduring legacy.
Biographical sources
The
scant biographical information about Austen comes from her few surviving
letters and sketches her family members wrote about her. Only about 160 of the
approximately 3,000 letters Austen wrote have survived and been published.
Cassandra Austen destroyed the bulk of the letters she received from her
sister, burning or otherwise destroying them. She wanted to ensure that the
"younger nieces did not read any of Jane's sometimes acid or forthright
comments on neighbours or family members". In the interest of protecting
reputations from Jane's penchant for honesty and forthrightness, Cassandra
omitted details of illnesses, unhappiness and anything she considered
unsavoury. Important details about the Austen family were elided by intention,
such as any mention of Austen's brother George, whose undiagnosed developmental
challenges led the family to send him away from home; the two brothers sent
away to the navy at an early age; or wealthy Aunt Leigh-Perrot, arrested and
tried on charges of larceny.
The
first Austen biography was Henry Thomas Austen's 1818 "Biographical
Notice". It appeared in a posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey and
included extracts from two letters, against the judgement of other family
members. Details of Austen's life continued to be omitted or embellished in her
nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and in William and Richard
Arthur Austen-Leigh's biography Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, published in
1913, all of which included additional letters. Austen's family and relatives built
a legend of "good quiet Aunt Jane", portraying her as a woman in a
happy domestic situation, whose family was the mainstay of her life. Modern
biographers include details excised from the letters and family biographies,
but the biographer Jan Fergus writes that the challenge is to keep the view
balanced, not to present her languishing in periods of deep unhappiness as
"an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant
family".
Life
Family
Jane
Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, , on 16 December 1775 in
a harsh winter, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. Her
father wrote of her arrival in a letter that her mother "certainly
expected to have been brought to bed a month ago". He added that the newborn
infant was "a present plaything for Cassy and a future companion".
The winter of 1776 was particularly harsh and it was not until 5 April that she
was baptised at the local church with the single name Jane.
She was the second daughter and seventh child in a
family of eight—six boys and two girls. Her closest companion throughout her
life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their
father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His
wife, Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu
verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.
George
Austen (1731–1805), served as the rector of the Anglican parishes of Steventon
and Deane. The Reverend Austen came from an old and wealthy family of wool
merchants. As each generation of eldest sons received inheritances, the wealth
was divided, and George's branch of the family fell into poverty. He and his
two sisters were orphaned as children, and had to be taken in by relatives. In
1745, at the age of fifteen, George Austen's sister Philadelphia was
apprenticed to a milliner in Covent Garden. At the age of sixteen, George
entered St John's College, Oxford, where he most likely met Cassandra Leigh
(1739–1827). She came from the prominent Leigh family (originally of Shropshire
and based at Stonleigh, Warwickshire since the later 16th century). Her father
was rector at All Souls College, Oxford, where she grew up among the gentry.
Her eldest brother James inherited a fortune and large estate from his
great-aunt Perrot, with the only condition that he change his name to
Leigh-Perrot.
George
Austen and Cassandra Leigh were engaged, probably around 1763, when they
exchanged miniatures. He received the living of the Steventon parish from
Thomas Knight, the wealthy husband of his second cousin. They married on 26
April 1764 at St Swithin's Church in Bath, by license, in a simple ceremony,
two months after Cassandra's father died. Their income was modest, with
George's small per annum living; Cassandra brought to the marriage the
expectation of a small inheritance at the time of her mother's death.
The
Austens took up temporary residence at the nearby Deane rectory until
Steventon, a 16th-century house in disrepair, underwent necessary renovations.
Cassandra gave birth to three children while living at Deane: James in 1765,
George in 1766, and Edward in 1767. Her custom was to keep an infant at home
for several months and then place it with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman living
nearby to nurse and raise for twelve to eighteen months.
Steventon
In
1768, the family finally took up residence in Steventon. Henry was the first
child to be born there, in 1771. At about this time, Cassandra could no longer
ignore the signs that little George was developmentally disabled. He was
subject to seizures, may have been deaf and mute, and she chose to send him out
to be fostered. In 1773, Cassandra was born, followed by Francis in 1774, and
Jane in 1775.
According
to biographer Park Honan, the atmosphere of the Austen home was an "open,
amused, easy intellectual" one, where the ideas of those with whom the
Austens might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed.
The
family relied on the patronage of their kin and hosted visits from numerous
family members. Mrs Austen spent the summer of 1770 in London with George's
sister, Philadelphia, and her daughter Eliza, accompanied by his other sister,
Mrs Walter and her daughter Philly. Philadelphia and Eliza Hancock were,
according to Le Faye, "the bright comets flashing into an otherwise placid
solar system of clerical life in rural Hampshire, and the news of their foreign
travels and fashionable London life, together with their sudden descents upon
the Steventon household in between times, all helped to widen Jane's youthful
horizon and influence her later life and works."
Cassandra
Austen's cousin Thomas Leigh visited a number of times in the 1770s and 1780s,
inviting young Cassie to visit them in Bath in 1781. The first mention of Jane
occurs in family documents upon her return, "... and almost home they were
when they met Jane & Charles, the two little ones of the family, who had to
go as far as New Down to meet the chaise, & have the pleasure of riding
home in it." Le Faye writes that "Mr Austen's predictions for his
younger daughter were fully justified. Never were sisters more to each other
than Cassandra and Jane; while in a particularly affectionate family, there
seems to have been a special link between Cassandra and Edward on the one hand,
and between Henry and Jane on the other."
From
1773 until 1796, George Austen supplemented his income by farming and by
teaching three or four boys at a time, who boarded at his home. The Reverend
Austen had an annual income of £200 (equivalent to £27,000 in 2021) from his
two livings. This was a very modest income at the time; by comparison, a
skilled worker like a blacksmith or a carpenter could make about £100 annually
while the typical annual income of a gentry family was between £1,000 and £5,000.
Mr. Austen also rented the 200-acre Cheesedown farm from his benefactor Thomas
Knight which could make a profit of £300 (equivalent to £41,000 in 2021) a
year.
During
this period of her life, Jane Austen attended church regularly, socialised with
friends and neighbours,[e] and read novels—often of her own composition—aloud
to her family in the evenings. Socialising with the neighbours often meant
dancing, either impromptu in someone's home after supper or at the balls held
regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall. Her brother Henry later said
that "Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it".
Education
In
1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs
Ann Cawley who took them to Southampton later that year. That autumn both girls
were sent home after catching typhus, from which Jane Austen nearly died. She
was from then home-educated, until she attended boarding school with her sister
from early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, ruled by Mrs La Tournelle.
The curriculum probably included French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music
and drama. The sisters returned home before December 1786 because the school
fees for the two girls were too high for the Austen family. After 1786, Austen
"never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family
environment".
Her
education came from reading, guided by her father and brothers James and Henry.
Irene Collins said that Austen "used some of the same school books as the
boys". Austen apparently had unfettered access both to her father's
library and that of a family friend, Warren Hastings. Together these
collections amounted to a large and varied library. Her father was also
tolerant of Austen's sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both
sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.
Private
theatricals were an essential part of Austen's education. From her early
childhood, the family and friends staged a series of plays in the rectory barn,
including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) and David Garrick's Bon Ton.
Austen's eldest brother James wrote the prologues and epilogues and she
probably joined in these activities, first as a spectator and later as a
participant. Most of the plays were comedies, which suggests how Austen's
satirical gifts were cultivated. At the age of 12, she tried her own hand at
dramatic writing; she wrote three short plays during her teenage years.
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