II.

Life

Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England. She was the seventh child of eight, and her family was close, affectionate, and lively. She lived most of her life among the same kind of people about whom she wrote. Her lifelong companion and confidant was her older and only sister, Cassandra. Neither woman ever married, but dozens of relatives and friends widened Austen’s social experiences beyond her immediate family. The Austens frequently staged amateur theatricals, and they were devoted readers of novels at a time when reading novels was regarded as a questionable activity. They also provided a delighted audience for Jane’s youthful comic pieces, and later for her novels. Jane had almost no formal education, but she read extensively and critically. At age 13 she was already writing amusing and instructive parodies and variations on 18th-century literature—from sentimental novels to serious histories.

By the time she was 23 years old, Austen had written three novels: Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions, and Susan, which were early versions of, respectively, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Northanger Abbey (1818). A fragment, Lady Susan, which scholars date between 1793 and 1795, most likely also belongs to this period, but it was not published until 1871.

In 1801 the family moved to the town of Bath. After Jane’s father died in 1805, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved several times, eventually settling in 1809 in the village of Chawton, very near Steventon. Austen lived and wrote there for the last eight years of her life.

All of Austen’s novels were originally published anonymously. Several of them went through two editions in her lifetime. Pride and Prejudice was particularly praised, and Emma (1816) received a favorable review from English writer Sir Walter Scott, who was a prominent literary figure of the time.