Jane Austen

Jane Austen (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːs-/; 16 December 1775 – 18 July

1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six
Jane Austen
major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the
British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's
plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the
pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her
works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the
18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century
literary realism.[2][b] Her use of biting irony, along with her
realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her
acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.[4]

With the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and

Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she
achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two other
novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published
Portrait, c. 1810[a]
posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled
Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind Born 16 December 1775
three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short Steventon Rectory,
epistolary novel Lady Susan, and another unfinished novel, The Hampshire, England
Watsons. Her six full-length novels have rarely been out of Died 18 July 1817 (aged 41)
print, although they were published anonymously and brought Winchester, Hampshire,
her moderate success and little fame during her lifetime. England
Resting Winchester Cathedral,
A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in place Hampshire, England
1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's
Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and Education Reading Abbey Girls'
sold as a set.[5] They gradually gained wider acclaim and School
popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her Period 1787 to 1817
nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a Relatives See family and ancestry
compelling version of her writing career and supposedly
Signature
uneventful life to an eager audience.

Austen has inspired many critical essays and literary

anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent
productions like Sense and Sensibility (1995), Emma (1996), Mansfield Park (1999), Pride & Prejudice
(2005), Love & Friendship (2016), and Emma (2020).[c] Her novels have also inspired many TV
adaptations, perhaps most notably Pride & Prejudice (1995), starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

Contents
Biographical sources
Life
Family
 Steventon
Education
Juvenilia (1787–1793)
Tom Lefroy
Early manuscripts (1796–1798)
Bath and Southampton
Chawton
Published author
Illness and death
Posthumous publication
Genre and style
Reception
Contemporaneous responses
19th century
Modern
Adaptations
Honours
List of works
Family trees
See also
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
Museums
Fan sites and societies

Biographical sources
There is little biographical information about Jane Austen's life except the few letters that survived and the
biographical notes her family members wrote.[7] During her lifetime, Austen may have written as many as
3,000 letters, but only 161 survived.[8] Many of the letters were written to Austen's older sister Cassandra,
who in 1843 burned the greater part of them and cut pieces out of those she kept. Ostensibly, Cassandra
destroyed or censored her sister's letters to prevent their falling into the hands of relatives and ensuring that
"younger nieces did not read any of Jane Austen's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours or
family members".[9][d] Cassandra believed that in the interest of tact and Jane's penchant for forthrightness,
these details should be destroyed. The paucity of record of Austen's life leaves modern biographers little
with which to work.[10]

The situation was compounded as successive generations of the family expunged and sanitised the already
opaque details of Austen's biography. The heirs of Jane's brother, Admiral Francis Austen, destroyed more
letters; details were excised from the "Biographical Notice" her brother wrote in 1818; and family details
continued to be omitted or embellished in her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and
in William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh's biography Jane
Austen: Her Life and Letters, published in 1913.[11] The legend the
family and relatives created reflects their biases in favour of "good
quiet Aunt Jane", portraying a woman whose domestic situation was
happy and whose family was the mainstay of her life.[7] Austen
scholar Jan Fergus explains that modern biographies tend to include
details excised from the letters and family biographical materials, but
that the challenge is to avoid the polarising view that Austen
experienced periods of deep unhappiness and was "an embittered,
disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family".[12]

Last page of letter from Austen to

her sister, Cassandra, 11 June
1799

Life

Family

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16

December 1775. She was born a month later than her
parents expected; her father wrote of her arrival in a letter
that her mother "certainly expected to have been brought to
bed a month ago". He added that her arrival was particularly
welcome as "a future companion to her sister".[14] The
winter of 1776 was particularly harsh and it was not until 5
April that she was baptised at the local church with the
single name Jane.[15] Steventon Church, as depicted in A Memoir
of Jane Austen[13]
For much of Jane's life, her father, George Austen (1731–
1805), served as the rector of the Anglican parishes at
Steventon and at nearby Deane.[16][e] He came from an old,
respected, and wealthy family of wool merchants. Over the centuries as each generation of eldest sons
received inheritances, their wealth was divided, and George's branch of the family fell into poverty. He and
his two sisters were orphaned as children and had to be taken in by relatives. His sister Philadelphia went to
India to find a husband and George entered St John's College, Oxford on a fellowship, where he most
likely met Cassandra Leigh (1739–1827).[18] She came from the prominent Leigh family; her father was
rector at All Souls College, Oxford, where she grew up among the gentry. Her eldest brother James
inherited a fortune and large estate from his great-aunt Perrot, with the only condition that he change his
name to Leigh-Perrot.[19]

George and Cassandra exchanged miniatures in 1763 and probably were engaged around that time.[20]
George received the living for the Steventon parish from the wealthy husband of his second cousin,
Thomas Knight, who owned Steventon and its associated farms, one of which the Austen family rented to
live in.[21] Two months after Cassandra's father died, they married on 26 April 1764 at St Swithin's Church
in Bath, by licence, in a simple ceremony. They left for Hampshire the same day.[22]
Their income was modest, with George's small per annum living; Cassandra brought to the marriage the
expectation of a small inheritance at the time of her mother's death.[23] The Austens took up temporary
residence at the nearby Deane rectory until Steventon, a 16th-century house in disrepair, underwent
necessary renovations. Cassandra gave birth to three children while living at Deane: James in 1765, George
in 1766, and Edward in 1767.[24] Her custom was to keep an infant at home for several months and then
place it with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman living nearby to nurse and raise for twelve to eighteen
months.[25]

Steventon

In 1768, the family finally took up residence in Steventon. Henry

was the first child to be born there, in 1771.[26] At about this time,
Cassandra could no longer ignore the signs that little George was
developmentally disabled. He was subject to seizures, may have
been deaf and mute, and she chose to send him out to be
fostered.[27] In 1773, Cassandra was born, followed by Francis in
1774, and Jane in 1775.[28]
Steventon rectory, as depicted in A
According to Honan, the atmosphere of the Austen home was an Memoir of Jane Austen, was in a
"open, amused, easy intellectual" one, where the ideas of those valley and surrounded by
with whom the Austens might disagree politically or socially were meadows.[13]
considered and discussed. [29] The family relied on the patronage
of their kin and hosted visits from numerous family members.[30]
Cassandra Austen spent the summer of 1770 in London with George's sister, Philadelphia, and her
daughter Eliza, accompanied by his other sister, Mrs Walter and her daughter Philly.[31][f] Philadelphia and
Eliza Hancock were, according to Le Faye, "the bright comets flashing into an otherwise placid solar
system of clerical life in rural Hampshire, and the news of their foreign travels and fashionable London life,
together with their sudden descents upon the Steventon household in between times, all helped to widen
Jane's youthful horizon and influence her later life and works."[32]

Cassandra Austen's cousin Thomas Leigh visited a number of times in the 1770s and 1780s, inviting young
Cassie to visit them in Bath in 1781. The first mention of Jane occurs in family documents on her return,
"... and almost home they were when they met Jane & Charles, the two little ones of the family, who had to
go as far as New Down to meet the chaise, & have the pleasure of riding home in it."[33] Le Faye writes
that "Mr Austen's predictions for his younger daughter were fully justified. Never were sisters more to each
other than Cassandra and Jane; while in a particularly affectionate family, there seems to have been a
special link between Cassandra and Edward on the one hand, and between Henry and Jane on the
other."[34]

From 1773 until 1796, George Austen supplemented his income by farming and by teaching three or four
boys at a time, who boarded at his home.[35] The Reverend Austen had an annual income of £200 from his
two livings.[36] This was a very modest income at the time; by comparison, a skilled worker like a
blacksmith or a carpenter could make about £100 annually while the typical annual income of a gentry
family was between £1,000 and £5,000.[36]

During this period of her life, Austen attended church regularly, socialised with friends and neighbours,[g]
and read novels—often of her own composition—aloud to her family in the evenings. Socialising with the
neighbours often meant dancing, either impromptu in someone's home after supper or at the balls held
regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall.[37] Her brother Henry later said that "Jane was fond of
dancing, and excelled in it".[38]
Education

In 1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to

be educated by Mrs Ann Cawley who took them with her to
Southampton when she moved there later in the year. In the
autumn both girls were sent home when they caught typhus and
Austen nearly died.[39] Austen was from then home educated,
until she attended boarding school in Reading with her sister from
early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, ruled by Mrs La
Tournelle, who possessed a cork leg and a passion for theatre.[40]
The school curriculum probably included some French, spelling,
needlework, dancing and music and, perhaps, drama. The sisters
returned home before December 1786 because the school fees for
the two girls were too high for the Austen family.[41] After 1786,
Austen "never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her
immediate family environment".[42]

The remainder of her education came from reading, guided by her

Silhouette of Cassandra Austen,
father and brothers James and Henry.[43] Irene Collins believes Jane's sister and closest friend
that Austen "used some of the same school books as the boys" her
father tutored.[44] Austen apparently had unfettered access both to
her father's library and that of a family friend, Warren Hastings. Together these collections amounted to a
large and varied library. Her father was also tolerant of Austen's sometimes risqué experiments in writing,
and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.[45]

Private theatricals were an essential part of Austen's education. From her early childhood, the family and
friends staged a series of plays in the rectory barn, including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) and
David Garrick's Bon Ton. Austen's eldest brother James wrote the prologues and epilogues and she
probably joined in these activities, first as a spectator and later as a participant.[46] Most of the plays were
comedies, which suggests how Austen's satirical gifts were cultivated.[47] At the age of 12, she tried her
own hand at dramatic writing; she wrote three short plays during her teenage years.[48]

Juvenilia (1787–1793)

From the age of eleven, and perhaps earlier, Austen wrote poems and stories for her own and her family's
amusement.[49] In these works, the details of daily life are exaggerated, common plot devices are parodied,
and the "stories are full of anarchic fantasies of female power, licence, illicit behaviour, and general high
spirits", according to Janet Todd.[50] Containing work written between 1787 and 1793, Austen compiled
fair copies of twenty-nine early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the Juvenilia.[51] She
called the three notebooks "Volume the First", "Volume the Second" and "Volume the Third", and they
preserve 90,000 words she wrote during those years.[52] The Juvenilia are often, according to scholar
Richard Jenkyns, "boisterous" and "anarchic"; he compares them to the work of 18th-century novelist
Laurence Sterne.[53]

Among these works are a satirical novel in letters titled Love and Freindship [sic], written at age fourteen in
1790,[54] in which she mocked popular novels of sensibility.[55] The next year she wrote The History of
England, a manuscript of thirty-four pages accompanied by thirteen watercolour miniatures by her sister,
Cassandra. Austen's History parodied popular historical writing, particularly Oliver Goldsmith's History of
England (1764).[56] Honan speculates that not long after writing Love and Freindship [sic], Austen decided
to "write for profit, to make stories her central effort", that is, to become a professional writer. When she
was around eighteen years old, Austen began to write longer, more sophisticated works.[57]
In August 1792, aged seventeen, Austen started writing Catharine
or the Bower, which presaged her mature work, especially
Northanger Abbey; it was left unfinished and the story picked up
in Lady Susan, which Todd describes as less prefiguring than
Catharine.[58] A year later, she began, but abandoned a short play,
later titled Sir Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a comedy in
6 acts, which she returned to and completed around 1800. This
was a short parody of various school textbook abridgements of
Austen's favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles
Grandison (1753), by Samuel Richardson.[59]

External video When Austen became an

aunt for the first time at
Presentation by Claire Tomalin
age eighteen, she sent
on Jane Austen: A Life, 23 new-born niece Fanny- Portrait of Henry IV. Declaredly
November 1997 (https://www.c-spa Catherine Austen-Knight written by "a partial, prejudiced, &
n.org/video/?95776-1/jane-austen-li "five short pieces of ... ignorant Historian", The History of
England was illustrated by Austen's
fe), C-SPAN the Juvenilia now known
sister, Cassandra (c. 1790).
collectively as 'Scraps' ..,
purporting to be her
'Opinions and Admonitions on the conduct of Young Women' ".
For niece Jane-Anna-Elizabeth Austen (also born in 1793) Jane Austen wrote "two more 'Miscellanious
[sic] Morsels', dedicating them to [Anna] on 2 June 1793, 'convinced that if you seriously attend to them,
You will derive from them very important Instructions, with regard to your Conduct in Life.' "[60] There is
manuscript evidence that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as 1811 (when she was 36), and
that her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814.[61]

Between 1793 and 1795 (aged eighteen to twenty) Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel,
usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.[62] It is unlike any of Austen's other
works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin describes the novella's heroine as a sexual predator who uses her
intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse her lovers, friends and family. Tomalin writes:

Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most
outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration ... It
stands alone in Austen's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of
character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.[63]

According to Janet Todd, the model for the title character may have been Eliza de Feuillide, who inspired
Austen with stories of her glamorous life and various adventures. Eliza's French husband was guillotined in
1794; she married Jane's brother Henry Austen in 1797.[30]

Tom Lefroy

When Austen was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a neighbour, visited Steventon from December 1795 to January
1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London for training as a barrister. Lefroy
and Austen would have been introduced at a ball or other neighbourhood social gathering, and it is clear
from Austen's letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together: "I am almost afraid to tell you
how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way
of dancing and sitting down together."[65]
Austen wrote in her first surviving letter to her sister Cassandra
that Lefroy was a "very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant
young man".[66] Five days later in another letter, Austen wrote that
she expected an "offer" from her "friend" and that "I shall refuse
him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat",
going on to write "I will confide myself in the future to Mr Tom
Lefroy, for whom I don't give a sixpence" and refuse all others.[66]
The next day, Austen wrote: "The day will come on which I flirt
my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all
over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea".[66]

Halperin cautioned that Austen often satirised popular sentimental

romantic fiction in her letters, and some of the statements about
Thomas Langlois Lefroy, Lord Chief
Lefroy may have been ironic. However, it is clear that Austen was Justice of Ireland, by W. H. Mote
genuinely attracted to Lefroy and subsequently none of her other (1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted
suitors ever quite measured up to him.[66] The Lefroy family that he had been in love with Austen:
intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was "It was boyish love."[64]
impractical as both Lefroy and Austen must have known. Neither
had any money, and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland
to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was
carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again.[67] In November 1798,
Lefroy was still on Austen's mind as she wrote to her sister she had tea with one of his relatives, wanted
desperately to ask about him, but could not bring herself to raise the subject.[68]

Early manuscripts (1796–1798)

After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length novel Elinor and Marianne. Her sister
remembered that it was read to the family "before 1796" and was told through a series of letters. Without
surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the
novel published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.[69]

Austen began a second novel, First Impressions (later published as Pride and Prejudice), in 1796. She
completed the initial draft in August 1797, aged 21; as with all of her novels, Austen read the work aloud to
her family as she was working on it and it became an "established favourite".[70] At this time, her father
made the first attempt to publish one of her novels. In November 1797, George Austen wrote to Thomas
Cadell, an established publisher in London, to ask if he would consider publishing First Impressions.
Cadell returned Mr. Austen's letter, marking it "Declined by Return of Post". Austen may not have known
of her father's efforts.[71] Following the completion of First Impressions, Austen returned to Elinor and
Marianne and from November 1797 until mid-1798, revised it heavily; she eliminated the epistolary format
in favour of third-person narration and produced something close to Sense and Sensibility.[72] In 1797,
Austen met her cousin (and future sister-in-law), Eliza de Feuillide, a French aristocrat whose first husband
the Comte de Feuillide had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry
Austen.[73] The description of the execution of the Comte de Feuillide related by his widow left Austen
with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.[73]

During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third
novel with the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the popular Gothic novel.[74]
Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen offered Susan to Benjamin
Crosby, a London publisher, who paid £10 for the copyright. Crosby promised early publication and went
so far as to advertise the book publicly as being "in the press", but did nothing more.[75] The manuscript
remained in Crosby's hands, unpublished, until Austen repurchased the copyright from him in 1816.[76]
Bath and Southampton

In December 1800 George Austen unexpectedly announced his decision

to retire from the ministry, leave Steventon, and move the family to 4,
Sydney Place in Bath.[77] While retirement and travel were good for the
elder Austens, Jane Austen was shocked to be told she was moving from
the only home she had ever known.[78] An indication of her state of mind
is her lack of productivity as a writer during the time she lived at Bath. She
was able to make some revisions to Susan, and she began and then
abandoned a new novel, The Watsons, but there was nothing like the
productivity of the years 1795–1799.[79] Tomalin suggests this reflects a
deep depression disabling her as a writer, but Honan disagrees, arguing
Austen wrote or revised her manuscripts throughout her creative life,
except for a few months after her father died.[80][h] It is often claimed that
Austen's house, 4 Sydney
Austen was unhappy in Bath, which caused her to lose interest in writing,
Place, Bath, Somerset
but it is just as possible that Austen's social life in Bath prevented her from
spending much time writing novels.[81] The critic Robert Irvine argued
that if Austen spent more time writing novels when she was in the
countryside, it might just have been because she had more spare time as opposed to being more happy in
the countryside as is often argued.[81] Furthermore, Austen frequently both moved and travelled over
southern England during this period, which was hardly a conducive environment for writing a long
novel.[81] Austen sold the rights to publish Susan to a publisher Crosby & Company, who paid her £10.[82]
The Crosby & Company advertised Susan, but never published it.[82]

The years from 1801 to 1804 are something of a blank space

for Austen scholars as Cassandra destroyed all of her letters
from her sister in this period for unknown reasons.[84] In
December 1802 Austen received her only known proposal of
marriage. She and her sister visited Alethea and Catherine
Bigg, old friends who lived near Basingstoke. Their younger
brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently finished his
education at Oxford and was also at home. Bigg-Wither
proposed and Austen accepted. As described by Caroline
Austen, Jane's niece, and Reginald Bigg-Wither, a
descendant, Harris was not attractive—he was a large, plain-
Austen was a regular visitor to her brother
looking man who spoke little, stuttered when he did speak,
Edward's home, Godmersham Park in
was aggressive in conversation, and almost completely
Kent, between 1798 and 1813. The house
tactless. However, Austen had known him since both were
is regarded as an influence on her
young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to works.[83]
Austen and her family. He was the heir to extensive family
estates located in the area where the sisters had grown up.
With these resources, Austen could provide her parents a comfortable old age, give Cassandra a permanent
home and, perhaps, assist her brothers in their careers. By the next morning, Austen realised she had made
a mistake and withdrew her acceptance.[85] No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austen felt
about this proposal.[86] Irvine described Bigg-Wither as a somebody who "...seems to have been a man
very hard to like, let alone love".[87]

In 1814, Austen wrote a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight, who had asked for advice about a serious
relationship, telling her that "having written so much on one side of the question, I shall now turn around &
entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him.
Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection".[88] The English scholar
Douglas Bush wrote that Austen had "had a very high ideal of the love that should unite a husband and
wife ... All of her heroines ... know in proportion to their maturity, the meaning of ardent love".[89] A
possible autobiographical element in Sense and Sensibility occurs when Elinor Dashwood contemplates
that "the worse and most irremediable of all evils, a connection for life" with an unsuitable man.[89][i]

In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen started, but did not complete,
her novel The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid and
impoverished clergyman and his four unmarried daughters.
Sutherland describes the novel as "a study in the harsh economic
realities of dependent women's lives".[91] Honan suggests, and
Tomalin agrees, that Austen chose to stop work on the novel after
her father died on 21 January 1805 and her personal circumstances
resembled those of her characters too closely for her comfort.[92]

Her father's relatively sudden death left Jane, Cassandra, and their
mother in a precarious financial situation. Edward, James, Henry,
and Francis Austen (known as Frank) pledged to make annual
contributions to support their mother and sisters.[93] For the next
four years, the family's living arrangements reflected their financial
insecurity. They spent part of the time in rented quarters in Bath
before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon
Watercolour of Jane Austen by her and Godmersham. They moved for the autumn months to the
sister, Cassandra, 1804.[90] newly fashionable seaside resort of Worthing, on the Sussex coast,
where they resided at Stanford Cottage.[j] It was here that Austen
is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan and added
its "Conclusion". In 1806 the family moved to Southampton, where they shared a house with Frank Austen
and his new wife. A large part of this time they spent visiting various branches of the family.[94]

On 5 April 1809, about three months before the family's move to Chawton, Austen wrote an angry letter to
Richard Crosby, offering him a new manuscript of Susan if needed to secure the immediate publication of
the novel, and requesting the return of the original so she could find another publisher. Crosby replied that
he had not agreed to publish the book by any particular time, or at all, and that Austen could repurchase the
manuscript for the £10 he had paid her and find another publisher. She did not have the resources to buy
the copyright back at that time,[95] but was able to purchase it in 1816.[96]

Chawton

Around early 1809 Austen's brother Edward offered his

mother and sisters a more settled life—the use of a large
cottage in Chawton village[k] that was part of Edward's
nearby estate, Chawton House. Jane, Cassandra and their
mother moved into Chawton cottage on 7 July 1809.[98]
Life was quieter in Chawton than it had been since the
family's move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not
socialise with gentry and entertained only when family
visited. Her niece Anna described the family's life in
Chawton as "a very quiet life, according to our ideas, but Cottage in Chawton, Hampshire where
they were great readers, and besides the housekeeping our Austen lived during her last eight years of
aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in life, now Jane Austen's House Museum
teaching some girl or boy to read or write."[99]

Published author
Like many women authors at the time, Austen published her books anonymously.[100] At the time, the
ideal roles for a woman were as wife and mother, and writing for women was regarded at best as a
secondary form of activity; a woman who wished to be a full-time writer was felt to be degrading her
femininity, so books by women were usually published anonymously in order to maintain the conceit that
the female writer was only publishing as a sort of part-time job, and was not seeking to become a "literary
lioness" (i.e a celebrity).[101]

During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen published four generally well-received novels. Through her
brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which, like all of
Jane Austen's novels except Pride and Prejudice, was published "on commission", that is, at the author's
financial risk. When publishing on commission, publishers would advance the costs of publication, repay
themselves as books were sold and then charge a 10% commission for each book sold, paying the rest to
the author. If a novel did not recover its costs through sales, the author was responsible for them.[102] The
alternative to selling via commission was by selling the copyright, where an author received a one-time
payment from the publisher for the manuscript, which occurred with Pride and Prejudice.[103] Austen's
experience with Susan (the manuscript that became Northanger Abbey) where she sold the copyright to the
publisher Crosby & Sons for £10, who did not publish the book, forcing her to buy back the copyright in
order to get her work published, left Austen leery of this method of publishing.[100] The final alternative, of
selling by subscription, where a group of people would agree to buy a book in advance, was not an option
for Austen as only authors who were well known or had an influential aristocratic patron who would
recommend an up-coming book to their friends, could sell by subscription.[103] Sense and Sensibility
appeared in October 1811, and was described as being written "By a Lady".[100] As it was sold on
commission, Egerton used expensive paper and set the price at 15 shillings.[100]

Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among

young aristocratic opinion-makers;[104] the edition sold out by mid-
1813. Austen's novels were published in larger editions than was
normal for this period. The small size of the novel-reading public and
the large costs associated with hand production (particularly the cost of
handmade paper) meant that most novels were published in editions of
500 copies or less to reduce the risks to the publisher and the novelist.
Even some of the most successful titles during this period were issued
in editions of not more than 750 or 800 copies and later reprinted if
demand continued. Austen's novels were published in larger editions,
ranging from about 750 copies of Sense and Sensibility to about 2,000
copies of Emma. It is not clear whether the decision to print more
copies than usual of Austen's novels was driven by the publishers or the
author. Since all but one of Austen's books were originally published
"on commission", the risks of overproduction were largely hers (or
Cassandra's after her death) and publishers may have been more willing
to produce larger editions than was normal practice when their own
First edition title page from funds were at risk. Editions of popular works of non-fiction were often
Sense and Sensibility, Austen's much larger.[105]
first published novel (1811)
Austen made £140 from Sense and Sensibility,[106] which provided her
with some financial and psychological independence.[107] After the
success of Sense and Sensibility, all of Austen's subsequent books were billed as written "By the author of
Sense and Sensibility" and Austen's name never appeared on her books during her lifetime.[100] Egerton
then published Pride and Prejudice, a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. Austen sold the
copyright to Pride and Prejudice to Egerton for £110.[100] To maximise profits, he used cheap paper and
set the price at 18 shillings.[100] He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, garnering
three favourable reviews and selling well. Had Austen sold Pride and Prejudice on commission, she would
have made a profit of £475, or twice her father's annual income.[100] By October 1813 Egerton was able to
begin selling a second edition.[108] Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. While
Mansfield Park was ignored by reviewers, it was very popular with readers. All copies were sold within six
months, and Austen's earnings on this novel were larger than for any of her other novels.[109]

Unknown to Austen, her novels were translated into French and published in cheaply produced, pirated
editions in France.[110] The literary critic Noel King commented in 1953 that, given the prevailing rage in
France at the time for lush romantic fantasies, it was remarkable that her novels with the emphasis on
everyday English life had any sort of a market in France.[111] However, King cautioned that Austen's chief
translator in France, Madame Isabelle de Montolieu, had only the most rudimentary knowledge of English,
and her translations were more of "imitations" than translations proper, as Montolieu depended upon
assistants to provide a summary, which she then translated into an embellished French that often radically
altered Austen's plots and characters.[112] The first of the Austen novels to be published that credited her as
the author was in France, when Persuasion was published in 1821 as La Famille Elliot ou L'Ancienne
Inclination.[113]

Austen learned that the Prince Regent admired her novels and kept a set at each of his residences.[l] In
November 1815, the Prince Regent's librarian James Stanier Clarke invited Austen to visit the Prince's
London residence and hinted Austen should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to the Prince. Though Austen
disliked the Prince Regent, she could scarcely refuse the request.[115] Austen disapproved of the Prince
Regent on the account of his womanising, gambling, drinking, spendthrift ways and generally disreputable
behaviour.[116] She later wrote Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters, a satiric outline
of the "perfect novel" based on the librarian's many suggestions for a future Austen novel.[117] Austen was
greatly annoyed by Clarke's often pompous literary advice, and the Plan of A Novel parodying Clarke was
intended as her revenge for all of the unwanted letters she had received from the royal librarian.[116]

In mid-1815 Austen moved her work from Egerton to John Murray, a better known London publisher,[m]
who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816. Emma
sold well, but the new edition of Mansfield Park did poorly, and this failure offset most of the income from
Emma. These were the last of Austen's novels to be published during her lifetime.[119]

While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began The Elliots, later published as Persuasion.
She completed her first draft in July 1816. In addition, shortly after the publication of Emma, Henry Austen
repurchased the copyright for Susan from Crosby. Austen was forced to postpone publishing either of these
completed novels by family financial troubles. Henry Austen's bank failed in March 1816, depriving him of
all of his assets, leaving him deeply in debt and costing Edward, James, and Frank Austen large sums.
Henry and Frank could no longer afford the contributions they had made to support their mother and
sisters.[120]

Illness and death

Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816, but ignored the warning signs. By the middle of that year, her
decline was unmistakable, and she began a slow, irregular deterioration.[121] The majority of biographers
rely on Zachary Cope's 1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison's disease,
although her final illness has also been described as resulting from Hodgkin's lymphoma.[122][n] When her
uncle died and left his entire fortune to his wife, effectively disinheriting his relatives, she suffered a relapse,
writing, "I am ashamed to say that the shock of my Uncle's Will brought on a relapse ... but a weak Body
must excuse weak Nerves".[124]

8 College Street in
Winchester where Austen
lived her last days and died
She continued to work in spite of her illness. Dissatisfied with the ending
of The Elliots, she rewrote the final two chapters, which she finished on 6
August 1816.[o] In January 1817, Austen began The Brothers (titled
Sanditon when published in 1925), and completed twelve chapters before
stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably due to illness.[126] Todd
describes Sanditon's heroine, Diana Parker, as an "energetic invalid". In
the novel, Austen mocked hypochondriacs and though she describes the
heroine as "bilious", five days after abandoning the novel she wrote of
herself that she was turning "every wrong colour" and living "chiefly on
the sofa".[124] She put down her pen on 18 March 1817, making a note of
it.[124]
Austen made light of her condition, describing it as "bile" and rheumatism.
As her illness progressed, she experienced difficulty walking and lacked
energy; by mid-April she was confined to bed. In May, Cassandra and

Winchester Cathedral, where Austen is buried, and her memorial gravestone in the nave of the Cathedral

Henry brought her to Winchester for treatment, by which time she suffered agonising pain and welcomed
death.[124] Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 at the age of 41. Henry, through his clerical
connections, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The
epitaph composed by her brother James praises Austen's personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation
and mentions the "extraordinary endowments of her mind", but does not explicitly mention her
achievements as a writer.[127]

Posthumous publication
In the months after Austen's death in July 1817, Cassandra, Henry Austen and Murray arranged for the
publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set.[p] Henry Austen contributed a Biographical
Note dated December 1817, which for the first time identified his sister as the author of the novels. Tomalin
describes it as "a loving and polished eulogy".[129] Sales were good for a year—only 321 copies remained
unsold at the end of 1818.[130]

Although Austen's six novels were out of print in England in the 1820s, they were still being read through
copies housed in private libraries and circulating libraries. Austen had early admirers. The first piece of
what might now be called fan fiction (or real person fiction) using her as a character appeared in 1823 in a
letter to the editor in The Lady's Magazine.[131] It refers to Austen's genius and suggests that aspiring
authors were envious of her powers.[132]
In 1832 Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of her novels, and over the following
winter published five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, Bentley
released the first collected edition of her works. Since then, Austen's novels have been continuously in
print.[133]

Genre and style

Austen's works critique the sentimental novels of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the
transition to 19th-century literary realism.[134][q] The earliest English novelists, Richardson, Henry Fielding
and Tobias Smollett, were followed by the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Walter Scott,
Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmith, whose style and genre Austen
rejected, returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic
study of manners".[135] In the mid-20th century, literary critics F. R. Leavis and Ian Watt placed her in the
tradition of Richardson and Fielding; both believe that she used their tradition of "irony, realism and satire
to form an author superior to both".[136]

Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction—'the
ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'".[137]
Yet her rejection of these genres is complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma.[137] Similar to
William Wordsworth, who excoriated the modern frantic novel in the "Preface" to his Lyrical Ballads
(1800), Austen distances herself from escapist novels; the discipline and innovation she demonstrates is
similar to his, and she shows "that rhetorically less is artistically more."[137] She eschewed popular Gothic
fiction, stories of terror in which a heroine typically was stranded in a remote location, a castle or abbey (32
novels between 1784 and 1818 contain the word "abbey" in their title). Yet in Northanger Abbey she
alludes to the trope, with the heroine, Catherine, anticipating a move to a remote locale. Rather than full-
scale rejection or parody, Austen transforms the genre, juxtaposing reality, with descriptions of elegant
rooms and modern comforts, against the heroine's "novel-fueled" desires.[138] Nor does she completely
denigrate Gothic fiction: instead she transforms settings and situations, such that the heroine is still
imprisoned, yet her imprisonment is mundane and real—regulated manners and the strict rules of the
ballroom.[139] In Sense and Sensibility Austen presents characters who are more complex than in staple
sentimental fiction, according to critic Keymer, who notes that although it is a parody of popular
sentimental fiction, "Marianne in her sentimental histrionics responds to the calculating world ... with a
quite justifiable scream of female distress."[140]

Richardson's Pamela, the prototype for the sentimental novel, is

a didactic love story with a happy ending, written at a time The hair was curled, and the
women were beginning to have the right to choose husbands maid sent away, and Emma sat
and yet were restricted by social conventions.[142] Austen down to think and be miserable.
attempted Richardson's epistolary style, but found the flexibility It was a wretched business,
of narrative more conducive to her realism, a realism in which indeed! Such an overthrow of
each conversation and gesture carries a weight of significance. everything she had been wishing
The narrative style utilises free indirect speech—she was the for! Such a development of every
first English novelist to do so extensively—through which she thing most unwelcome!
had the ability to present a character's thoughts directly to the
reader and yet still retain narrative control. The style allows an
author to vary discourse between the narrator's voice and values — example of free indirect
and those of the characters.[143] speech, Jane Austen, Emma[141]
Austen had a natural ear for speech and dialogue, according to
scholar Mary Lascelles: "Few novelists can be more scrupulous
than Jane Austen as to the phrasing and thoughts of their characters."[144] Techniques such as fragmentary
speech suggest a character's traits and their tone; "syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary" is utilised to
indicate social variants.[145] Dialogue reveals a character's mood—frustration, anger, happiness—each
treated differently and often through varying patterns of sentence structures. When Elizabeth Bennet rejects
Darcy, her stilted speech and the convoluted sentence structure reveals that he has wounded her:[146]

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with
you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and
your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that the groundwork of
disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. And I had not
known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever
be prevailed on to marry.[147]

Austen's plots highlight women's traditional dependence on marriage to secure social standing and
economic security.[148] As an art form, the 18th-century novel lacked the seriousness of its equivalents
from the 19th century, when novels were treated as "the natural vehicle for discussion and ventilation of
what mattered in life".[149] Rather than delving too deeply into the psyche of her characters, Austen enjoys
them and imbues them with humour, according to critic John Bayley. He believes that the well-spring of her
wit and irony is her own attitude that comedy "is the saving grace of life".[150] Part of Austen's fame rests
on the historical and literary significance that she was the first woman to write great comic novels. Samuel
Johnson's influence is evident, in that she follows his advice to write "a representation of life as may excite
mirth".[151]

Her humour comes from her modesty and lack of superiority, allowing her most successful characters, such
as Elizabeth Bennet, to transcend the trivialities of life, which the more foolish characters are overly
absorbed in.[150] Austen used comedy to explore the individualism of women's lives and gender relations,
and she appears to have used it to find the goodness in life, often fusing it with "ethical sensibility", creating
artistic tension. Critic Robert Polhemus writes, "To appreciate the drama and achievement of Austen, we
need to realize how deep was her passion for both reverence and ridicule ... and her comic imagination
reveals both the harmonies and the telling contradictions of her mind and vision as she tries to reconcile her
satirical bias with her sense of the good."[151]

Reception

Contemporaneous responses

As Austen's works were published anonymously, they

brought her little personal renown. They were fashionable
among opinion-makers, but were rarely reviewed.[104] Most
of the reviews were short and on balance favourable, although
superficial and cautious,[152][153] most often focused on the
moral lessons of the novels.[154] In 1816 the editors of The New Monthly
Magazine noted Emma's publication, but
Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist of the day, anonymously chose not to review it.[K]
wrote a review of Emma 1815, using it to defend the then-
disreputable genre of the novel and praising Austen's realism,
"the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the
reader, instead of the splendid scenes from an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that
which is daily taking place around him".[155] The other important early review was attributed to Richard
Whately in 1821. However, Whately denied having authored the review, which drew favourable
comparisons between Austen and such acknowledged greats as Homer and Shakespeare, and praised the
dramatic qualities of her narrative. Scott and Whately set the tone for almost all subsequent 19th-century
Austen criticism.[156]

19th century

Because Austen's novels did not conform to Romantic and Victorian

expectations that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated by an egregious
display of sound and colour in the writing",[158] 19th-century critics and
audiences preferred the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.[159]
Though the Romantic Scott was positive, Austen's work did not match
the prevailing aesthetic values of the Romantic zeitgeist.[160] Her novels
were republished in Britain from the 1830s and sold steadily, but they
were not best-sellers.[161]

One of the first two published
illustrations of Pride and
Prejudice, from the Richard
Bentley edition.[157] Caption
reads: "She then told him [Mr
Bennett] what Mr Darcy had
voluntarily done for Lydia. He
heard her with astonishment."
The first French critic who paid notice to Austen was Philarète Chasles
in an 1842 essay, dismissing her in two sentences as a boring, imitative
writer with no substance.[162] Austen was almost completely ignored in
France until 1878,[162] when the French critic Léon Boucher published
the essay Le Roman Classique en Angleterre, in which he called Austen
a "genius", the first French author to do so.[163] The first accurate
translation of Austen into French occurred in 1899 when Félix Fénéon
translated Northanger Abbey as Catherine Moreland.[163]
In Britain, Austen gradually grew in the estimation of the literati.
Philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes published a series of
enthusiastic articles in the 1840s and 1850s.[164] Later in the century,
novelist Henry James referred to Austen several times with approval, and
on one occasion ranked her with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry
Fielding as among "the fine painters of life".[165]

The publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced Austen to a
wider public as "dear aunt Jane", the respectable maiden aunt. Publication of the Memoir spurred the
reissue of Austen's novels—the first popular editions were released in 1883 and fancy illustrated editions
and collectors' sets quickly followed.[166] Author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania that
started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry". Around the start of the 20th century, an
intellectual clique of Janeites reacted against the popularisation of Austen, distinguishing their deeper
appreciation from the vulgar enthusiasm of the masses.

In response, Henry James decried "a beguiled infatuation" with Austen, a rising tide of public interest that
exceeded Austen's "intrinsic merit and interest".[167] The American literary critic A. Walton Litz noted that
the "anti-Janites" in the 19th and 20th centuries comprised a formidable literary squad of Mark Twain,
Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, D. H. Lawrence and Kingsley Amis, but in "every case the adverse
judgement merely reveals the special limitations or eccentricities of the critic, leaving Jane Austen relatively
untouched".[168]

Modern
Austen's works have attracted legions of scholars. The first
dissertation on Austen was published in 1883, by George Pellew, a
student at Harvard University.[169] Another early academic
analysis came from a 1911 essay by Oxford Shakespearean scholar
A. C. Bradley,[170] who grouped Austen's novels into "early" and
"late" works, a distinction still used by scholars today.[171] The
first academic book devoted to Austen in France was Jane Austen
by Paul and Kate Rague (1914), who set out to explain why
French critics and readers should take Austen seriously.[163] The
same year, Léonie Villard published Jane Austen, Sa Vie et Ses
Oeuvres, originally her PhD thesis, the first serious academic study
of Austen in France.[163] In 1923, R.W. Chapman published the
first scholarly edition of Austen's collected works, which was also
the first scholarly edition of any English novelist. The Chapman
text has remained the basis for all subsequent published editions of
Austen's works.[172]

With the publication in 1939 of Mary Lascelles' Jane Austen and

Her Art, the academic study of Austen took hold.[173] Lascelles
analyzed the books Austen read and their influence on her work,
and closely examined Austen's style and "narrative art". Concern Depiction of Austen from A Memoir
arose that academics were obscuring the appreciation of Austen of Jane Austen (1871) written by her
with increasingly esoteric theories, a debate that has continued nephew James Edward Austen-
since.[174] Leigh, and based on the sketch by
Cassandra. All subsequent portraits
The period since World War II has seen a diversity of critical of Austen are generally based on
approaches to Austen, including feminist theory, and perhaps most this, including on the reverse of the
controversially, postcolonial theory.[175] The divide has widened Bank of England £10 note introduced
between the popular appreciation of Austen, particularly by in September 2017.
modern Janeites, and academic judgements.[176] In 1994, literary
critic Harold Bloom placed Austen among the greatest Western
writers of all time.[177]

In the People's Republic of China after 1949, writings of Austen were regarded as too frivolous,[178] and
thus during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Austen was banned as a "British bourgeois
imperialist".[179] In the late 1970s, when Austen's works was re-published in China, her popularity with
readers confounded the authorities who had trouble understanding that people generally read books for
enjoyment, not political edification.[180]

In a typical modern debate, the conservative American professor Gene Koppel, to the indignation of his
liberal literature students, mentioned that Austen and her family were "Tories of the deepest dye", i.e.
Conservatives in opposition to the liberal Whigs. Although several feminist authors such as Claudia
Johnson and Mollie Sandock claimed Austen for their own cause, Koppel argued that different people react
to a work of literature in different subjective ways, as explained by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Thus competing interpretations of Austen's work can be equally valid, provided they are grounded in
textual and historical analysis: it is equally possible to see Austen as a feminist critiquing Regency society
and as a conservative upholding its values.[181]

Adaptations
Austen's novels have resulted in sequels, prequels and adaptations of almost every type, from soft-core
pornography to fantasy. From the 19th century, her family members published conclusions to her
incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were over 100 printed adaptations.[182] The first dramatic adaptation
of Austen was published in 1895, Rosina Filippi's Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen:
Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-Room Performance, and Filippi was also responsible for the first
professional stage adaptation, The Bennets (1901).[183] The first film adaptation was the 1940 MGM
production of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.[184] BBC television
dramatisations since the 1970s have attempted to adhere meticulously to Austen's plots, characterisations
and settings.[185] The British critic Robert Irvine noted that in American film adaptations of Austen's
novels, starting with the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, class is subtly downplayed, and the society
of Regency England depicted by Austen that is grounded in a hierarchy based upon the ownership of land
and the antiquity of the family name is one that Americans cannot embrace in its entirety.[186]

From 1995 many Austen adaptations appeared, with Ang Lee's film of Sense and Sensibility, for which
screenwriter and star Emma Thompson won an Academy Award, and the BBC's immensely popular TV
mini-series Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.[187] A 2005 British production of
Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen,[188]
was followed in 2007 by ITV's Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion,[189] and in 2016 by
Love & Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan, a film version of Lady Susan, that borrowed
the title of Austen's Love and Freindship [sic].[190]

Honours
Austen is on the £10 note which was introduced in 2017, replacing
Charles Darwin.[192][193][194]

List of works

Austen's arms:Or, a chevron gules

between three lions' gambs erect
erased sable armed of the
second.[191]

Novels Juvenilia—Volume the Juvenilia—Volume the

First (1787–1793)[s]
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813) Frederic & Elfrida
Mansfield Park (1814) Jack & Alice
Emma (1815) Edgar & Emma
Northanger Abbey (1818, Henry and Eliza
posthumous) The Adventures of Mr.
Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Harley
Sir William Mountague
Second (1787–1793)
Love and Freindship
Lesley Castle
The History of England
A Collection of Letters
The female philosopher
The first Act of a Comedy
 Lady Susan (1871, Memoirs of Mr. Clifford A Letter from a Young
posthumous) The Beautifull Lady
Cassandra A Tour through Wales
Unfinished fiction Amelia Webster A Tale
The Watsons (1804) The Visit
The Mystery Juvenilia—Volume the
Sanditon (1817) Third (1787–1793)
The Three Sisters
Other works A Fragment Evelyn
A beautiful description Catharine, or The Bower
Sir Charles Grandison (adapted
The generous Curate
play) (1793, 1800)[r]
Ode to Pity
Plan of a Novel (1815)
Poems (1796–1817)
Prayers (1796–1817)
Letters (1796–1817)

Family trees

Austen, her parents and her siblings

Her siblings, nieces and nephews

See also
Jane Austen's family and ancestry

Notes
a. The original is unsigned, but was believed by the family to have been made by Cassandra
and remained in the family with the one signed sketch by Cassandra until 1920. The original
sketch, according to relatives who knew Jane Austen well, was not a good likeness.[1]
b. Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and Sensibility "may well be the first English realistic
novel" based on its detailed and accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting and spending"
in an English gentry family.[3]
c. The title of the film has a period attached to signify it being a period piece.[6]
d. Important details about the Austen family were almost certainly elided by intention, such as
mention of Austen's brother George, whose undiagnosed developmental challenges led the
family to send him away from home; the two brothers sent away to the navy at an early age;
or mention of the sisters' wealthy Aunt Leigh-Perrot, arrested and tried on charges of
larceny.[10]
e. Irene Collins estimates that when George Austen took up his duties as rector in 1764,
Steventon comprised no more than about thirty families.[17]
f. Philadelphia had returned from India in 1765 and taken up residence in London; when her
husband returned to India to replenish their income, she stayed in England. He died in India
in 1775, with Philadelphia unaware until the news reached her a year later, fortuitously as
George and Cassandra were visiting. See Le Faye, 29–36
g. For social conventions among the gentry generally, see Collins (1994), 105
h. Doody agrees with Tomalin; see Doody, "Jane Austen, that disconcerting child", in
Alexander and McMaster 2005, 105.
 i. Elinor Dashwood's original quote from chapter 29, page 159, of Sense and Sensibility is:
"the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled
man."
j. Austen's observations of early Worthing probably helped inspire her final, but unfinished
novel, Sanditon, the story of an up-and-coming seaside resort in Sussex.
k. Chawton had a population of 417 at the census of 1811.[97]
l. The Prince Regent's admiration was by no means reciprocated. In a letter of 16 February
1813 to her friend Martha Lloyd, Austen says (referring to the Prince's wife, whom he treated
notoriously badly) "I hate her Husband".[114]
m. John Murray also published the work of Walter Scott and Lord Byron. In a letter to Cassandra
dated 17/18 October 1816, Austen comments that "Mr. Murray's Letter is come; he is a
Rogue of course, but a civil one."[118]
n. Claire Tomalin prefers a diagnosis of a lymphoma such as Hodgkin's disease.[123]
o. The manuscript of the revised final chapters of Persuasion is the only surviving manuscript
for any of her published novels in her own handwriting.[125] Cassandra and Henry Austen
chose the final titles and the title page is dated 1818.
p. Honan points to "the odd fact that most of [Austen's] reviewers sound like Mr. Collins" as
evidence that contemporary critics felt that works oriented toward the interests and concerns
of women were intrinsically less important and less worthy of critical notice than works
(mostly non-fiction) oriented towards men.[128]
q. Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and Sensibility "may well be the first English realistic
novel" based on its detailed and accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting and spending"
in an English gentry family.[3]
r. The full title of this short play is Sir Charles Grandison or The happy Man, a Comedy in 6
acts. For more information see Southam (1986), 187–189.
s. This list of the juvenilia is taken from The Works of Jane Austen. Vol VI. 1954. Ed. R.W.
Chapman and B.C. Southam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, as supplemented by
additional research reflected in Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray, eds. Catharine
and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

References
1. Kirkham (2005), 68–72.
2. Grundy (2014), 195–197
3. MacDonagh (1991), 65, 136–137.
4. Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4214-2282-4.
5. Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-2282-4.
6. "Emma. director Autumn de Wilde explains the film's unusual punctuation" (https://www.radi
otimes.com/news/film/2020-02-14/emma-title-full-stop-period/). Radio Times.
7. Fergus (2005), 3–4
8. Le Faye (2005), 33
9. Le Faye (2004), 270; Nokes (1998), 1; Le Faye (2005), 33
10. Nokes (1998), 1–2; Fergus (2005), 3–4
11. Nokes (1998), 2–4; Fergus (2005), 3–4; Le Faye (2004), 279
12. Fergus (2005), 4
13. Le Faye (2004), 20
14. Le Faye (2004), 27; Nokes (1998), 51
15. Le Faye (2004), 27
16. Todd (2015), 2
17. Collins (1994), 86
18. Le Faye (2004), 3–5, 11
19. Le Faye (2004), 8; Nokes (1998), 51
20. Le Faye (2004), 11
21. Le Faye (2004), 6
22. Le Faye (2004), 11; Nokes (1998), 24, 26
23. Le Faye (2004), 12; Nokes (1998), 24
24. Le Faye (2004), 11, 18, 19; Nokes (1998), 36
25. Le Faye (2004), 19
26. Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 25
27. Le Faye (2004), 22
28. Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 24–27
29. Honan (1987), 211–212
30. Todd (2015), 4
31. Nokes (1998), 39; Le Faye (2004), 22–23
32. Le Faye (2004), 29
33. Le Faye (2004), 46
34. Le Faye (2004), 26
35. Honan (1987), 14, 17–18; Collins (1994), 54.
36. Irvine (2005) p.2
37. Tomalin (1997), 101–103, 120–123, 144; Honan (1987), 119.
38. Quoted in Tomalin (1997), 102; see also Honan (1987), 84
39. Le Faye (2004), 47–49; Collins (1994), 35, 133.
40. Todd (2015), 3
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Watt, Ian. "Introduction". Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Watt.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.
Watt, Ian, ed. Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1963.
Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: The Picture of Health. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-41476-8.

Further reading
Gubar, Susan and Sandra Gilbert. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984 [1979].
ISBN 0-300-02596-3.

External links
Works by Jane Austen in eBook form (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jane-austen) at
Standard Ebooks
Works by Jane Austen (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Austen,+Jane) at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Jane Austen (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3
A%22Austen%2C%20Jane%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Jane%20Austen%22%20OR%
20creator%3A%22Austen%2C%20Jane%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Jane%20Austen%
22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Austen%2C%20J%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Jane%2
0Austen%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Austen%2C%20Jane%22%20OR%20descript
ion%3A%22Jane%20Austen%22%29%20OR%20%28%221775-1817%22%20AND%20Au
sten%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Jane Austen (https://librivox.org/author/155) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition (http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html),
a digital archive from the University of Oxford
A Memoir of Jane Austen (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17797) by James Edward
Austen-Leigh
Jane Austen (http://www.bl.uk/people/jane-austen) at the British Library
Portal:Jane Austen (https://web.archive.org/web/20190628045056/https://en.wikipedia.org/w
iki/Portal:Jane_Austen), the old Wikipedia portal at the Internet Archive

Museums
Jane Austen's House Museum (http://www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk/) in Chawton
 The Jane Austen Centre (http://www.janeausten.co.uk) in Bath

Fan sites and societies

The Republic of Pemberley (http://www.pemberley.com)
The Jane Austen Society of Australia (https://web.archive.org/web/20051124033438/http://w
ww.jasa.net.au/index.html)
The Jane Austen Society of North America (http://www.jasna.org)
The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom (http://www.janeaustensociety.org.uk/)

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