Jane Austen

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."-Jane Austen

Jane Austen is perhaps one of the most well known romance authors of our time. Not only are her books renowned, and read far and wide, but now a multitude of spinoffs and replicas have been created, in all forms of media.



Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, the second daughter and seventh child to George Austen, a clergyman at the local parish, and Cassandra Austen, a member of a prominent English family.

She spent her young years in the small parish of Steventon, Hampsire, where her father was a reverend. Since she was one of only two girls, she naturally became close with her sister, Cassandra Austen. That's not to say she didn't also have a good relationship with the rest of her family, in fact she learned sign language in order to speak to her deaf and mute brother, George, and was also known to have been close to her brother Henry, who would later prove instrumental in getting her work published.

Her father had an extensive library, being an Oxford educated man, and the children were all encouraged to read all they could get their hands on. In 1783, when Jane was about 8 years old, she and her older sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to get a full education. They stayed and were taught by a Mrs. Ann Cawley, who took them with her when she moved to Southhampton later in 1783.

That fall, both Cassandra and Jane caught typhus, and went home. Jane's recovery was slow, and she nearly didn't recover. From that point, her parents decided to keep her at home for a while, teaching her from there.

In 1785, both girls were shipped off to a boarding school, where they stayed until the following year. They returned home, due to the price of the boarding school being too high for the Austen family, and Jane very rarely ever left the confines of her immediate area.

That's not to say that Jane didn't continue her education, or never speak to anyone again. Her father was known to tutor the local boys, and it's likely that Jane was allowed to read from the same books, and possibly even listen in on the lessons.

The Austens were not a typical family of the day. They probably would have fit in quite well to the current era. Jane's father especially, who provided his daughters both with the materials needed to experiment with their writing skills. The family didn't shun foreign ideas, as was popular (and still is). Instead, when their children heard outside opinions, the family discussed the pros and cons of the ideals, and let their children ask questions and learn about the world outside.

Jane was not the person her extended family wished to believe she was. While her sister burned or censored much of Jane's letters and journals after her death, many believe that Jane was a curious, stubborn child with a penchant for asking questions and challenging the ideals of her day. Perhaps this is why the main characters of most of her stories were seen as fringe, and were better received by young people.

By 11 year old, Jane was already writing furiously in her notebooks. Her work was mainly stories that paralleled her every day life at home, only in her fantasy world, the women were fantastical, especially in that day. They were powerful, energetic, and often pushed the boundaries on what was expected of women in that day. Jane would later put her short stories into a single work, which are now available in a book called Juvenilia.

Some of Jane's characters went so far as to be highly sexual (well, sexualized for that era), pushing the boundaries once again. One such character was Lady Susan, a recently widowed woman who uses her wit and powers of seduction to nab herself, and her daughter, a husband. She's seen by the male characters as desirable, and she is well aware of it. She uses it to her advantage, and even goes so far as to have several younger suitors chasing her at one time. This story was a precursor of several of her more well known works, and would later be published under a different name.

One of the stories she wrote during that time was Love and Friendship which has recently been made into a film. In it, she is seen mocking the sensible novels of the day. It's around the time that this was finished, around 1793, that Jane decides to pursue writing as a career, and begins writing more detailed, lengthier works.

Jane spent a lot of time attending balls, going to church, enjoying dinner parties, and reading outloud to her family and friends. It was at one such event, a ball in the winter of 1795, that Jane met the charming and handsome Tom Lefroy.

Tom Lefroy was an Irishman who had come to stay for a time in the area. They met at a ball, and Jane found herself more and more attracted to him. In letters she wrote to her sister, she wold often tease about the man, saying that she was "almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved."

It's likely that nothing more than flirting went on between them, but later in life, Tom admitted to having loved Jane, although it was a 'boyish love', so maybe something more went on between them.

Over the next several months, the two spent a great deal of time together, but somewhere in the back of their mind, they both must have known it wasn't going to last. Tom was wholly dependent on a relative to finish his education and start his career in law. Jane wasn't wealthy either, and knew she never would be, so the marriage would have been impractical and ended in disaster.

In spite of this, Jane let herself fall in love. While a good majority of her letters to her sister are gone, the ones that survived showed Jane's decent into madness over him, ending with her saying she knew he was leaving soon, and her "tears flow as [she] writes this melancholy idea".

When Tom's family realized what was going on between him and Jane, they snatched him up and sent him away as soon as they could. Not only did he need to focus on his career, but Jane was poor, and no doubt her fire and modern ideas didn't set well with them. Even when he was in the area, his family took great pains to keep him away from her. She would never see Tom Lefroy again.

Through heartbreak often comes a spark of genius though, and this was the case for a heartbroken Jane Austen. Many believe that she based one of her most famous (if not the most famous) of her novels on her doomed relationship with Tom Lefroy. Pride and Prejudice was written around this time.

Jane had described Tom as a "gentleman-like, good looking, pleasant young man". Some think that maybe she had based Mr. Darcy on Tom, and Elizabeth Bennet on herself, although others believe that Tom's outgoing personality was the base for Elizabeth, and Jane's sullen mood became Mr. Darcy. It's more likely that the two characters were a mixture of both of them.

Jane had already written a novel, but poured her full effort into one that was called First Impressions. She read it often to her family as she revised it, and it became a favorite. Her father enjoyed it so much that he sent it to an established publisher, but it was rejected. He probably did this in secret, and so perhaps Jane was unaware of the rejection (which might have been a good thing, seeing as how this work bore the wretchedness of her heart).

Once she had finished that one, she returned to a manuscript she had been working on previous to the Tom Lefroy heartbreak, Elinor and Marianne. She continued to work on this one for a long time. Finally satisfied with it in 1798, she proudly produced a book which would go on to become Sense and Sensibility. She then began working on a novel called Susan, which would go on to become Northanger Abbey.

Early in 1803, Henry, Jane's brother, took Susan to a publisher in London, who paid £10 for the copyright, and even went so far as to advertise the book in the paper, but never actually got it published. Even in those days, vanity publishers, scam artists, and 'publishers' with no experience were the pitfall of many a potential author (some things never change).

In December 1800, Jane was hit with a hard blow as her father left his position in the church and moved the entire family to Bath. For the older siblings, this was an opportunity, but to Jane, all that happened was her being uprooted from the only home she had ever known.

During this time, Cassandra destroyed every letter from her sister, for unknown reasons. I believe, and so do several others, that Jane was extremely depressed. She stopped writing, made few revisions in her work, and for the most part sat stagnant. As a writer myself, I know there is a difference between the frenzied writing of heartbreak or some other emotional warfare, and the emptiness when you feel alone, and so no writing can be done. It's likely that Jane had no energy left at this point, because she had left her home, and probably never stopped dreaming about Tom Lefroy.

Then, in December of 1802, Jane received a marriage proposal. The man was a childhood friend, Harris Bigg-Wither. Jane and her sister were visiting with his sisters at the time near Basingstoke. They had known each other since their youth, but he was neither attractive nor interesting, and the only reason Jane accepted is because she was trying to set her family up well. Harris was well off. He had recently finished his education, and was heir to several estates near where Jane and her family had lived before. But according to family, Harris was unattractive, poor at conversation, stuttered when he actually did speak, and had little tact.

By the following morning, Jane realized what a mistake she was about to make, and broke it off with Harris. This is probably the inspiration behind several of her story's heroins refusal to marry for money, and their contemplation that love is the only reason to marry someone. I have no doubt that Jane was comparing the brutish, boring lump of Harris Bigg-Wither to the dashing, charming, and handsome Tom Lefroy the entire night before she broke it off.

In 1804, Jane began another novel while still living in Bath. It was the story of a clergyman with four unmarried daughters, but she stopped writing when tragedy struck the following year.

On January 21, 1805, Jane's father abruptly died. While the family knew George Austen was ill, they were not expecting his death so suddenly. This threw the Austen girls onto shaky grounds financially, but the Austen men promised to take care of them.

The family moved into an apartment in Bath for a short time, but then went to stay with family that June. Jane didn't write for much of this time, no doubt because her father's death came a huge blow to her. It's noted that in many of her works, the father character is either greatly loved by the main character, or has died at the beginning, leaving the family to scramble to find something to do with themselves.

That autumn, they moved to the seaside in Sussex, to a popular resort called Worthing. It was while living here that Jane finished Lady Susan and finally gave it an ending. Then, in 1806, they moved in with Frank Austen and his new bride, but spent a good deal of time visiting other family instead of being at home.

In April of 1809, just before the family was to move again, Jane sent a scathing letter to Richard Crosby, the man who had purchased her novel years earlier, along with a newly revised edition of Susan. There was still no publication, and no promise of a date, and she was hoping that the new version would force him to publish. He replied that he had promised neither, and told her she could buy it back but he was not going to return it for free. Jane didn't have the money at this point, so she was forced to decline the offer.

The women then moved into a small cottage near Jane's brother, Edward, called Chawton. It was thanks to the finally stable living conditions that Jane hit another creative spurt like the one she had enjoyed during her time around Tom Lefroy. The rest of the family described the era as a quiet one, where the women stopped entertaining except for family, and spent a lot of time quietly reading, or in Jane's case, writing.

Chawton saw the beginning of Jane's success as an author. In 1811, Henry finally was able to find a publisher for one of her books. Thomas Eggerton went to publish Sense and Sensibility, which made it's debut to the world in October of 1811. It was met with relatively high reviews, and became well read throughout the fashionable young aristocrats. The first edition sold out completely by 1813, giving Jane the finances her family needed.

Eggerton then agreed to take on First Impressions which was re-titled Pride and Prejudice. This time, he put a little more time, money, and effort into advertising, and the book was a hit. It hit the stands in January of 1813, and sold out so quickly that a second edition was printed by October of that year.

Eggerton then published a third novel, after seeing how successful the first two were. Mansfield Park didn't do so well with the critiques, but the public ate it up like the first two. This one sold out within six months and made more money than the first two. It was at this point that Jane was finally able to enjoy being financially comfortable.

Jane decided to leave Eggerton behind and found herself working with a well known London publisher, John Murray.

Under Murray, Jane published Emma in February of 1816. Emma was also a success, but they didn't make as money because they had attempted to publish a second edition of Mansfield Park and it wasn't received as well as they had hoped.

Around this time, Henry bought back Susan for Jane, which would later be published under the name Persuasion.

Unfortunately, the Austen men suddenly all fell on hard times, which once again left the Austen women on shaky financial grounds. Jane took this time to throw herself once more into her work, hoping to publish more and somehow help support the family, as the men could no longer afford to help support their mother and sisters.

At the beginning of 1816, Jane had started to notice that she felt unwell most of the time. She wrote it off and continued working. When her uncle died and left none of her family any inheritance in his will, Jane relapsed for a time, although she was quickly back on her feet.

Even though her family could see Jane getting sicker and sicker, she continued to play it off as no big deal, and even wrote a character into one of her stories who was an upbeat woman with an illness.

She finished writing her book The Elliots in August of 1816, and shortly after began working on a new novel which she called The Brothers but would later be called Sanditon. She had only written around 12 chapters when she set her pen down in March of 1817.

At only 41 years old, Jane struggled to even walk without pain. There was no denying her illness now, although she tried to maintain her positive attitude throughout. By April, she was confined to her bed completely.

Cassandra and Henry were obviously worried about their sister, and had her moved to Winchester to find medical help. Many modern scholars believe Jane was either suffering from Addison's Disease, which is a disease of your adrenal glands and fits many of Jane's symptoms, including her self-diagnose discoloration, or Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which is a type of cancer that could not be treated in that era (I personally believe Addison's Disease was the culprit as it fits more of her symptoms).

In pain and miserable, Jane Austen succumbed to her illness and died on July 18th, 1817, at just 41 years old.

Tom Lefroy heard of Jane's death and made his way from Ireland to pay his respects. At an auction, he bought one of Jane's rejection letters for Pride and Prejudice. He later told a family member that he had loved her, but he had moved on with his life. I wonder if perhaps he read her work, and saw the connection in Pride and Prejudice between himself and Jane.

Cassandra and Henry got more of her work published after her death, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Later, Richard Bentley purchased her work and had several illustrated copies published, and her work has been in print ever since.

Jane Austen's life was short and riddled with personal tragedy. Perhaps it's because of this tragedy that her work still rings true to modern readers. Most of what she wrote was based on events in her life, and who she wished she could be. He quick wit still enchants readers, and her clear view of the politics and ridiculous customs of the day made her stand apart from other authors, and made her work timeless for all generations.

I don't doubt that Jane never forgot Tom Lefroy, and that he never forgot her. Had they actually gotten married, there's a good chance that Jane would have died an unknown author, merely someone who had struggled her whole life.

As is often the case with artists, Jane's legacy strengthened after her death, and she was never able to see what she had truly created. Her work has not only been read by millions, but it has been constantly immortalized on stage and on screen. I have no doubt that she would be very proud of what she has created if she could see it today.

Sources: Wikipedia, Janeausten.org, biography.com, some previous knowledge of the subject