Jane Austen (1775-1817) has been called by literary scholars ‘our prose Shakespeare." Her contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, one of the age’s greatest writers, once lamented that her ‘exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.’ Today, Jane is regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time; some critics have even claimed she is the first great novelist.
There are numerous Jane Austen Societies around the world. The Regency Period of Jane's novels (1811-1820) has become the preferred setting for countless historical romances. Jane was remarkably modest. Her name never appeared on the title page of her books in her lifetime. Despite her humility, her work has become the ideal example of the maxim that a novelist should write about what they know best; that commonplace, everyday experience can be the source of great and enduring art.
"I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female whoever dared to be an authoress" (Jane Austen – In a letter to Reverend James Clarke, 1815).
We know that Jane was the youngest of eight children of George Austen, the rector of Steventon in Hampshire, England and Cassandra Leigh Austen. Ironically, Jane’s father, who privately tutored sons of the gentry to prepare them for Oxford and Cambridge, felt unable to teach his daughters. Nevertheless he encouraged their education. Jane and her old sister, Cassandra, were educated privately at schools in Oxford, Southampton and Reading. Jane and Cassandra grew up well read in the English classics, prose and poetry and was reasonably well-versed in languages, music and art. She began writing during her early teenage years, composing plays and stories which she read aloud to amuse her family.
The Austens Move to Bath
In 1801, George Austen, accompanied by his family, retired to Bath. After his death in 1805, the family moved to Southampton to live nearer to the two youngest of the six Austen sons, who were in the Navy. The Austens returned to Hampshire in 1809 settling in a comfortable cottage in the village of Chawton, where Jane remained until her death from Addison’s disease, at the age of 42.
Spinsterhood
Because Jane never married, the tendency is to see her as a wise, spinster aunt, writing exclusively about courtship and marriage matters outside her own experience. However, she was certainly not a recluse. There had been at least one marriage proposal and one woman who knew Jane in her early years commented: "she was the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly ever remembered." Shunning marriage, Austin involved herself instead with her wide circle of friends and relatives while lending a handin running the family household.
Jane’s writing career is divided in two periods: her earliest work, written in Steventon, then a 12-year lull, followed by the relocation to Chawton to Chawton, where her early novels (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey) were reworked and her later novels (Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion) were written.
Although 200 years have passed, Jane Austen’s perceptiveness has never become dated; women readers continue to identify with her heroines, and both men and women claim her as a favourite novelist. Her timeless capacity to delight readers was praised by Somerset Maugham, who said of her: "Nothing very much happens in her books, and yet, when you come to the bottom of the page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will happen next. The novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess."
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Source: The Most Influential Women by Deborah G Felder (Robinson Publications of London) 1996.
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