English
writer, who first gave the novel its modern character
through the treatment of everyday life. Although
Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published
her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupation
of her young, well-bred heroines is courtship,
and finally marriage. Austen's best-known books
include PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813) and EMMA (1816).
 Jane
Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, where
her father was a rector. She was the second daughter
and seventh child in a family of eight. The first
25 years of her life Austen spent in Hampshire.
She was tutored at home. Her parents were avid
readers and she received a broader education than
many women of her time. On her father's retirement,
the family moved to Bath.
Austen started
to write for family amusement as a child. Her
earliest-known writings date from about 1787.
Very shy about her writing, she wrote on small
pieces of paper that she slipped under the desk
plotter if anyone came into the room. After the
death of her father in 1805, she lived with her
mother and sister in Southampton and moved in
1809 to a large cottage in the village of Chawton.
Austen never married.
In Chawton Austen
started to write her major works, among them SENSE
AND SENSIBILITY, the story of the impoverished
Dashwood sisters, Marianne and Elinor, who try
to find proper husbands to secure their social
position. The novel was written in 1797 as the
revision of a sketch called Elinor and Marianne,
composed when the author was 20. Austen's heroines
are determined to marry wisely and well, but romantic
Marianne is a character who feels intensely about
everything and loses her heart to an irresponsible
seducer.
In all of Austen's
novels her heroines are ultimately married. Pride
and Prejudice described the clash between Elisabeth
Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and
Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner.
Their relationship starts from dislike but at
last they fall in love and are happily united.
In 1998 appeared a sequel to the novel, entitled
Desire and Duty, written by Teddy F. Bader, et
al. It followed the ideas Jane Austen told her
family. Emma was written in comic tone and told
the story of Emma Woodhouse, who finds her destiny
in marriage. During the story Emma, a snobbish
young woman, develops into someone capable of
feeling and love.
Austen focused
on middle-class provincial life with humor and
understanding. She depicted the life of minor
landed gentry, country clergymen and their families,
in which marriage mainly determined women's social
status. Of her six great novels, four were published
anonymously during her lifetime. At her death
on July 18, 1817 in Winchester, Austen was writing
the unfinished SANDITON. Austen was buried in
Winchester Cathedral.
Austen's brother
Henry made her authorship public after her death.
Emma had been reviewed favourably by Sir Walter
Scott, who wrote in his journal of March 14, 1826:
"[Miss Austen] had a talent for describing
the involvements and feelings and characters of
ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful
I have ever met with. The Big Bow-Wow strain I
can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite
touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things
and characters interesting, from the truth of
the description and the sentiment, is denied to
me." Charlotte Brontė and E.B. Browning found
her limited. It was not until the publication
of J.E. Austen-Leigh's Memoir in 1870 that a Jane
Austen cult began to develop. Austen's unfinished
Sanditon was published in 1925.
Emma -
a novel begun in January 1814 and completed
in March of the next year. Published in three
volumes in 1815.
For further
reading: Memoirs by J.E. Austen-Leigh (1870);
Jane Austen and Her World by Mary Lascelles
(1939); Jane Austen and Her Art by M. Lascalles
(1941); Jane Austen by R.W. Chapman (1948);
The Novels of Jane Austen by Robert Liddell
(1963); The Language of Jane Austen by N. Page
(1972); The Double Life of Jane Austen by Jane
Hodge (1972); The Critical Heritage, ed. by
B. Southam (1987); Jane Austen by Claudia L.
Johnson (1990); Erotic Faith by Robert M. Polhemus
(1990); Jane Austen's Novels by Roger Gard (1992);
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed.
by Edward Copeland, Juliet McMaster (1997);
A History of Jane Austen's Family by George
Holbert Tucker (1998); Critical Essays of Jane
Austen, ed. by Laura Mooneyham (1998); Jane
Austen by Deirdre Le Faye (1998); The Author's
Inheritance: Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and
the Establishment of the Novel by Jo Alyson
Parker (1998) - See also: J.F. Cooper - Museum:
Jane Austen's House, Chawton, Alton, GU34 ISD.
- Austen wrote Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion
while living in this house.
Selected works:
| LADY SUSAN,
1793-94 |
| THE WATSONS,
1804 (unfinished) |
| SENSE AND
SENSIBILITY, 1811 - film 1995, dir. by
Ang Lee |
| PRIDE AND
PREJUDICE, 1813 - film 1940, dir. by Robert
Z. Leonard, written Aldous Huxley, Jane Murfin,
play Helen Jerome |
| MANSFIELD
PARK, 1814 |
| EMMA, 1815
- Emma - films: 1932, dir. by Clarence
Brown; 1996, dir. by Douglas Mc Grath
|
| NORTHANGER
ABBEY, 1817 |
| PERSUASION,
1818 - film 1955, dir. by Rober Michell
|
| LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP,
1922 |
| THREE NOVELS,
1923 (ed. by R.W. Chapman) |
| LETTERS, 1925
|
| SANDITON (unfinished),
1925 |
| THE WATSONS,
1927 |
| FRAGMENTS,
1934 |
| THE OXFORD
ILLUSTRATED JANE AUSTEN, 1923-54 (ed. by R.W.
Chapman) |
| JANE AUSTEN'S
LETTERS TO HER SISTER CASSANDRA AND OTHERS,
1964 (ed. by R.W. Chapman, 2nd ed.) |
| COMPLETE NOVELS
OF JANE AUSTEN, 1998 |
|
