Jane Austen Biography

About Jane Austen Biography - Jane Austen was an English novelist best known for her six major works, which analyse, critique, and remark on the British landed aristocracy around the turn of the nineteenth century. Jane Austen short stories frequently address women's need for marriage in order to show Jane Austen achievements, social status and financial security. Her works constitute part of the shift to 19th-century literary realism and critique Jane Austen's famous books of sensibility from the second half of the 18th century. Her witty sarcasm, as well as her humour, realism, and social critique, have long gained her praise from reviewers, academics, and general audiences.

Jane Austen Information

Born: 16 December 1775

Died: 18 July 1817 (aged 41)

Education: Reading Abbey Girls' School.

Life and Family

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire. Her parents were surprised when she arrived a month later than expected; her father stated in a letter that her mother "definitely expected to have been taken to bed a month ago." He went on to say that her entrance was especially pleasant because she would be a "future partner to her sister." The winter of 1776 was exceptionally hard, and she was not baptised with the single name Jane until 5 April at the local church.

Jane Austen's father, George Austen (1731–1805), was the rector of the Anglican parishes of Steventon and Deane for most of her life. He came from a long line of wool merchants who were well-known, respected, and affluent. Since each generation of eldest sons got inheritances over the years, their money was shared, and George's branch of the family became impoverished. 

As children, he and his two sisters (Jane Austen siblings) were orphaned and had to be cared for by relatives. His sister Philadelphia moved to India to find a husband, while George took a scholarship at St John's College, Oxford, where he met Cassandra Leigh (1739–1827). Her father has been the rector of All Souls College, Oxford, in which she did grow up amongst this nobility, and she came from a renowned Leigh family. James, her eldest brother, acquired a big estate and money from his great-aunt Perrot on the demand that he change his appearance to Leigh-Perrot.

Education

Austen and her sister Cassandra were taken to Oxford in 1783 to be educated by Mrs Ann Cawley, who afterwards relocated to Southampton and brought them with her. When both girls had typhus in the autumn, they were returned home, and Austen eventually died. Austen was homeschooled until early in 1785 when she started boarding school in Reading with her sister at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, which was run by Mrs La Tournelle, who had a cork leg and a love for theatre. French, needlework, dancing, spelling, and music, and maybe theatre were all likely part of the school curriculum. The sisters came back home before December 1786 because the Austen family couldn't afford the two girls' school tuition. Austen "never resided anywhere outside the limits of her immediate familial surroundings" after 1786. Her father and brothers James and Henry helped her with the rest of her education by encouraging her to read.

Jane Austen works

Literary Works: Austen began writing in bound notebooks after being enthralled by the realm of stories. She began writing her own novels and stories by Jane Austen throughout her childhood in the 1790s and wrote Love and Friendship, a satire of romantic literature organised as a series of love letters. She revealed her humour and distaste of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, using that framework, a different perspective that would ultimately characterise most of her subsequent writing. The History of England, a 34-page satire of historical writing with drawings painted by Cassandra, was published the following year.

Austen's Juvenilia refers to the notebooks that include novels as well as short poems, tales, and plays. Austen spent most of her early years helping out around the house, playing the piano, going to church, and mingling with her neighbours. Her nights and weekends were regularly filled with cotillions, and she became a skilled dancer as a consequence. On other evenings, she might select a novel from the bookshelf and read it out loud to her family, sometimes one she had authored herself.

She kept writing, honing her craft in increasingly ambitious pieces like Lady Susan, an epistolary narrative regarding a manipulative lady who utilises her sexuality, cleverness, and charm to gain control over others. Austen also began work on a few of her future important works, the Jane Austen first novel was Elinor and Marianne, a letter-based novel that would later be released as Sense and Sensibility. Following Austen's death, she began writing First Impressions, which would eventually be printed as Pride and Prejudice, and Susan, which would subsequently be published as Northanger Abbey by Jane's brother, Henry.

Austen, her father, mother, and Cassandra relocated to Bath in 1801. After a brief illness, her father died in 1805. As a consequence, the family's finances were strained, and the three ladies were forced to travel from place to place, hopping between the houses of different family members and rented apartments. They didn't find a stable housing situation until 1809 when they moved into Austen's brother Edward's cottage at Chawton.

Austen began anonymously publishing her works in her 30s. She wrote Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice author, and Emma under the pseudonym Jane Austen between 1811 and 1816.

Jane Austen Death

Austen began to feel ill in 1816, at the age of 41, with what a few believe was Addison's illness. She undertook admirable efforts to keep working at a normal rate, correcting past works and beginning a new novel, The Brothers, which would have been released as Sanditon after her death. Persuasion, another novel, would likewise be published posthumously. Austen's health eventually deteriorated to the point where she stopped writing. She died at Winchester, Hampshire, England, on July 18, 1817.

Legacy

Austen's first three novels gained critical acclaim and increased financial reward while she was still living, and it wasn't until after her death that her brother Henry announced that she was an author to the general public.

Academics and the members of the public alike regard Austen as being one of the greatest writers in English history. The British public selected her No. 70 on a list of "100 Top Famous Britons of All Time" in a BBC poll in 2002. Austen's rise from unknown author to worldwide renowned author occurred in the 1920s, when scholars began to identify her writings as classics, boosting her overall appeal. The Janeites, a Jane Austen fan group, grew in popularity over time, comparable to the Trekkie phenomenon which defines Star Trek, franchise enthusiasts. Numerous film and television adaptations of Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility have been made, and also the TV series and film Clueless, which is centred on Emma.

In 2007, author David Lassman made international headlines when he presented a handful of Austen's manuscripts with minor alterations below a different name to numerous publishing houses, and they were all turned down. He published an article called "Rejecting Jane" about the experience, a fitting tribute to a novelist who appreciated wit and comedy.