Jane Austen

Jane Austen never married and remained close to her family till the very end.

Sometime in early 1816, Jane Austen was inflicted with some serious illness, later diagnosed as Addison’s disease. However, she continued to write and by August rewrote the final chapters of ‘The Elliots’ and also started a burlesque, titled ‘Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various Quarters’ (published in 1871).

Next she started working on ‘The Brothers’ (later titled ‘Sanditon’). However, her condition began to deteriorate and she made her will in April 1817. In May, she was taken to Winchester for treatment. She died there on July 18, 1817 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Jane Austen was born on 16 December, 1775 in the village of Steventon in Hampshire. Her father, Reverend George Austen, was the rector of the Anglican parishes of Steventon and Dean. A great reader, he owned a vast library and often supplemented his income by tutoring students for Oxford.

Her mother, Cassandra (née Leigh), was famed for her ready wit, impromptu verses and stories. Jane was born seventh of their eight children; she had six brothers named James, George, Edward, Henry, Francis, Charles and an elder sister named Cassandra.

From childhood, Jane was very fond of her sister. Their mother had once said, "If Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too".

Cassandra was an amateur watercolorist, who created two of Jane’s portraits. Like Jane, she too never married and the two sisters lived together all their life. When they were not together, they wrote extensively to each other and more than one hundred such letters have been found.

Jane was also very close to Henry, who started his career as a banker but later became a clergyman. He had a large circle of friends and exposed Jane to a society that she normally would not have known. Later he functioned as her literary agent.

Sometime in 1787, Jane Austen began writing and by June 1793, she had created a large body of work, which she ‘fair copied’ in three large note books, now referred to as the ‘Juvenilia.’ Today, one of those books is preserved in Bodleian Library and the other two in British Museum.

These notebooks contain twenty-nine plays, verses and short novels written in various stages. Among them, ‘Love and Friendship’, a parody of romantic novel, written in 1790 as letters from the heroine Laura to Marianne, showcases her dislike for sentimental fictions.

’The History of England’, written in 1791, is another component of these notebooks. Notwithstanding the name, it is actually a burlesque, poking fun at the schoolroom history textbooks available in those days.

Apart from writing, Jane Austen also loved to socialize. She was fond of dancing and attended the balls held regularly at the town hall or at some of her neighbors’ residences. She was an excellent dancer. She also attended the church regularly and loved sewing.

In the autumn of 1794, Jane Austen wrote her first serious work, titled ‘Lady Susan’. It is possible that she based the character of Susan on her neighbor Mrs. Craven. However, the book was not published until 1871.

In 1795, she wrote ‘Elinor and Marianne’. It not only remained unpublished, but its manuscript is also lost. Although it is certain that her later novel, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was based on it, in the absence of the manuscript, it cannot be determined how much of the original storyline had been retained.

In October 1796, she wrote another novel, ‘The First Impression’ and completed the initial draft by August 1797. George Austen sent the manuscript to Thomas Cadell, an established publisher in London, but it was rejected. Much later it was revised and published as ‘Pride and Prejudice’.

From November 1797, Austen began to revise ‘Elinor and Marianne’. In August 1798, she started working on another novel, ‘Susan’, finishing it sometime towards the end of June 1799. It was a satire of the Gothic novels popular at the time.