Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on December 16th 1775 at Steventon Rectory, near Basingstoke, Hampshire, where her father worked as the vicar of Steventon. Being the seventh of eight children, Jane always felt specially united to her eldest sister, Cassandra, with whom she went to different schools at Oxford, Southampton and Reading up to she was eleven years old. From then onwards her father took pains so that she could have a good educaation and encouraged her in reading so that when she was twenty years old she spent most of her time writing (short stories in general). Because of her natural curiosity she did notice any pattern of behaviour that was strange or uncommon according to her own image of the world and this would appear in her novels. The time she spent at Steventon and her active social life provided her with all the information she needed to develop the scenery and characters for her works. There she would write 'Northanger Abey', 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Pride and Prejudice' though this works were not published then.

At the age of 25 her family decided to move to Bath (1801), because her father wanted to retire there and spent the rest of his life in that part of England. Jane did not feel quite enthusiastic about this change and despite it provided scenes for some of her books, she did not embark on any of her following novels during the five years she was there.

After her father's death in 1805, her dear sister Cassandra and a good family friend, Martha Lloyd, moved to Southampton near their brother Frank and his wife Mary. Jane continued her long walks through the lovely countryside but she had a less active social life because her mother was left comparatively poor after her husband's death.

In 1809 the family moves again but to Chawton, near Alton. Here Jane lived a more quiet life and deboted completely her time to the writing of her novels. She revised both 'Sense and Sensibility' which was published in 1811, and 'Pride and Prejudice', which was published in 1813. All her novels were published anonimously for at the time, women were not taken too seriously in their literary enterprises. 'Mansfield Park' was published in 1814 and 'Emma' in 1815. 'Persuasion' was completed in 1816 but was not published until 1818, as well as 'Northanger Abey' after Jane Austen's death in 1817. Although Jane Austen died relatively young, she never stopped doing what had become part of her life, writing, and so at the beginning of 1817 she started to write a new novel, 'Sanditon', unfortunately unfinished.

We can stately say that Jane Austen's quite complete and deep works speak of the genius of their creator who has left behind a whole inheritance for future writers.

If you want to know more about Jane Austen's period, the Regency, click here, a Regency Repository.

To see other biographies on Jane Austen, click Kirijasto and 'El poder de la palabra' (EPDLP).

From the Spanish Magazine 'Qué Leer', click here.

Novels in English & Spanish to download in 'Ediciones del Sur'

Biography on line by Constance Hill, published in 1901, here