Jane Austen

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Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was a British novelist whose realism, biting social commentary, and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature.<ref>Southam, "Criticism, 1870-1940", The Jane Austen Companion, 102.</ref>

Austen lived her entire life as part of a large and close-knit family located on the lower fringes of English gentry.<ref>Lascelles, 2.</ref> She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to Austen's development as a professional writer.<ref>Lascelles, 4-5; MacDonagh, 110-28; Honan, 79, 183-85; Tomalin, 66-68.</ref> Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five years old. During this period, she wrote three major novels and began a fourth.<ref>Sutherland, "Chronology of Composition and Publication", Jane Austen in Context, 13.</ref> From 1811 until 1815, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published after her death in 1817, and began a third (eventually titled Sanditon), but died before it could be completed.

Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism.<ref>Litz, 3-14; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 192-93; Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early", Jane Austen in Context, p. 83, 89-90; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814-1870", The Jane Austen Companion, 93-94. 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 (65, 136-37).</ref> Austen's plots, although fundamentally comic,<ref>Litz, 142.</ref> highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.<ref>MacDonagh, 66-75.</ref> Like Samuel Johnson, one of the strongest influences on her writing, her works are concerned with moral issues.<ref>Honan, 124-27; Trott, "Critical Responses, 1830-1970", Jane Austen in Context, 92.</ref>

During her own lifetime, Austen's works brought her little fame and only a few positive reviews. During the mid-nineteenth century, her novels were admired only by a literary elite. However, with the publication of her nephew's A Memoir of the Life of Jane Austen in 1870, her works became visible to a wider public. By the 1940s, Austen was firmly ensconced in academia as a "great English writer" and the second half of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship, exploring every avenue of her works: artistic, ideological, and historical. Currently, Austen's works are one of the most written-about and debated oeuvres in the academy. Furthermore, a Janeite fan culture has grown up around Austen, her works, and the various adaptations of them.

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Life

Biographical information concerning Jane Austen is "famously scarce", according to one biographer.<ref>Fergus, "Biography", Jane Austen in Context, 3-4.</ref> Only some personal and family letters remain (by one estimate only 160 out of Austen's 3,000 letters are extant),<ref>Le Faye, "Letters", Jane Austen in Context, 33.</ref> and her sister Cassandra (to whom most of the letters were originally addressed) censored those she retained. Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Francis Austen, Jane's brother. Most of the biographical material produced for fifty years after Austen's death was written by her relatives and reflects the family's biases in favour of "good quiet Aunt Jane". Scholars have unearthed little more since.<ref>Fergus, "Biography", Jane Austen in Context, 3-4.</ref>

Family

Jane Austen's father, George Austen, and his wife, Cassandra, were members of substantial gentry families.<ref>Honan, 29-30.</ref> George was descended from a family of woollen manufacturers which had risen through the professions to the lower ranks of the landed gentry.<ref>Honan, 11-14.</ref> Cassandra was a member of the prominent Leigh family.<ref>Tomalin, 6, 13-16, 147-51, 170-71; Greene, "Jane Austen and the Peerage", Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, 156-57; Fergus, "Biography", Jane Austen in Context, 5-6.</ref> For much of Jane's life, from 1765 until 1801, George Austen served as the rector of the Anglican parishes at Steventon, Hampshire and a nearby village. From 1773 until 1796, he supplemented this income by farming and by running a residential boy's school for three or four boys.<ref>Honan, 14, 17-18.</ref>

Austen's immediate family was large and close-knit: six brothers—James, George, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Edward—and a beloved older sister, Cassandra. All survived to be adults. Cassandra was Austen's closest friend and confidante throughout her life.<ref>Fergus, "Biography", 3; Tomalin, 142; Honan, 23, 119.</ref> Of her brothers, Austen felt closest to Henry, who became a banker and, after his bank failed, an Anglican clergyman. Henry was also his sister's literary agent. His large circle of friends and acquaintances in London included bankers, merchants, publishers, painters, and actors: he provided Austen with a view of social worlds not normally visible from a small parish in rural Hampshire.<ref>MacDonagh, 50-51; Honan, 246.</ref>

Early life and education

Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon rectory.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology of Jane Austen's Life", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2.</ref> After a few months at home, Mrs. Austen placed her daughter with a woman living in a nearby village who raised and nursed Austen for a year or eighteen months.<ref>Tomalin, 7-9; Honan, 21-22; Le Faye, A Family Record, 19.</ref> Following this, Austen was educated at home, largely by her father, until leaving for boarding school with her sister Cassandra early in 1783. The school curriculum probably included some French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music and, perhaps, drama. By December 1786, Jane and Cassandra had returned home.<ref>Tomalin, 9-10, 26, 33-38, 42-43.</ref> Austen acquired the remainder of her education by reading books, guided by her father and her brothers James and Henry.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 2-3; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", 190-91; Tomalin, 28-29, 33-43, 66-67; Honan, 31-34; Lascelles, 7-8.</ref> George Austen apparently gave his daughters unfettered access to his large and varied library, was tolerant of Austen's sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.<ref>Honan, 66-68.</ref> According to Park Honan, a biographer of Austen, life in the Austen home was lived in "an open, amused, easy intellectual atmosphere" where the ideas of those with whom the Austens might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed.<ref>Honan, 211-12.</ref>

Private theatricals were also a part of Austen's education. From when she was seven until she was thirteen, the family and close friends staged a series of plays, including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) and David Garrick's Bon Ton. While the details are unknown, Austen would certainly have joined in these activities, as a spectator at first and as a participant when she was older.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 2-3; Tucker, "Amateur Theatricals at Steventon", The Jane Austen Companion, 1-2; Tomalin, 31-32, 40-42, 55-57, 62-63; Honan, 35, 47-52, 423-24, n. 20.</ref> Most of the plays were comedies, which suggests one way in which Austen's comedic and satirical gifts were cultivated.<ref>Honan, 53-54; Lascelles, 106-07; Litz, 14-17.</ref>

Juvenilia

At some point, perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories, and plays for her own and her family's amusement.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 2; Litz, "Chronology of Composition", The Jane Austen Companion, 48; Honan, 61-62, 70; Lascelles, 4.</ref> Austen later compiled "fair copies" of these early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the Juvenilia, containing pieces originally written between 1787 and 1793. There is manuscript evidence that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as the period 1809-1811, and that her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814.<ref>Sutherland, 14; Doody, "The Short Fiction", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 85-86.</ref>

In 1790, at age fourteen, Austen dedicated one of her most ambitious early stories, a satirical black comedy entitled Love and Freindship [sic], to her cousin and lifelong friend, Eliza de Feuillide. In it, she mocked popular novels of sensibility by writing her own exaggerated version. The heroine undergoes many sentimental and violent adventures and behaves with shocking impropriety. Characters defy parental authority, steal, accumulate debts, and flee from creditors; young ladies elope with fortune-hunting officers; and sons rob their mothers, leaving them to starve, and become opera stars.<ref>Quoted in Litz, 21; Tomalin, 47; Honan, 73-74; Southam, "Juvenilia", The Jane Austen Companion, 248-49.</ref>

In a second early attempt at satire, Austen wrote The History of England, a parody of popular historical writing, particularly Oliver Goldsmith's History of England (1764). Goldsmith's History was written in a breezy, colloquial style similar to that of the least distinguished novels of sensibility. Austen imitated and exaggerated that style, writing familiarly and tongue in cheek about historical figures. Honan comments that Austen "reserved her best mockery for Protestant historians who treat death lightly, or for writers or those who do not understand what it is when a king, queen or saint dies" [emphasis Honan's].<ref>Honan, 75.</ref> For example, she writes: "Henry the 4th ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399, after having prevailed on his cousin & predecessor Richard the 2nd, to resign it to him, & to retire for the rest of his Life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered."<ref>Austen, The History of England, Catharine and Other Writings, 134.</ref> The History of England is full of allusions, verbal games, and jokes intended for her family's amusement, such as the narrator's claims to be partial to the "roman catholic religion", a comment that would surely have attracted the amused attention of Austen's father and brother James.<ref>Tomalin, 66-67; Honan, 74-76; Southam, "Juvenalia", 245, 249-251; Lascelles, 9.</ref> Austen's Juvenilia are often, according to scholar Richard Jenkyns, "boisterous" and "anarchic". He compares them to the work of eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne and the twentieth-century comedy group Monty Python.<ref>Jenkyns, 31.</ref>

Adult life

As Austen grew into adulthood, she continued to live at her parents' home, carrying out those activities normal for women of her age and social standing: she practised the pianoforte, assisted her sister and mother with supervising servants, and attended female relatives during childbirth and older relatives on their deathbeds.<ref>Gary Kelly, "Education and accomplishments," Jane Austen in Context, 256-57; Tomalin, 101-03, 120-23, 144.</ref> Austen was particularly proud of her accomplishments as a seamstress.<ref>Honan, 265.</ref> She also attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and neighbours, and read novels (often of her own composition) aloud with her family in the evenings. Socializing 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.<ref>Tomalin, 101-03, 120-23, 144; Honan, 119.</ref> Her brother Henry later said that "Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it".<ref>Quoted in Tomalin, 102; see also Honan, 84.</ref>

In 1793, Austen began a short play, later entitled 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 abridgments of Austen's favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), by Samuel Richardson.<ref>Southam, "Grandison", The Jane Austen Companion, 187-89.</ref> Honan speculates that at some point not long after writing Love and Freindship in 1789, Austen decided to "write for profit, to make stories her central effort", that is, to become a professional writer.<ref>Honan, 93.</ref> Whenever she made that decision, beginning in about 1793, Austen began to write lengthier, more sophisticated works.<ref>Honan, 93.</ref>

During the period between 1793 and 1795, Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work. It is unlike any of Austen's other works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin describes the heroine of the novella as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray, and abuse her victims, whether lovers, friends or 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."<ref>Tomalin, 82-85; see also Sutherland, 15; Honan, 101-02.</ref>

Early novels

After finishing Lady Susan, Austen attempted her first full-length novel—Elinor and Marianne. Her sister Cassandra later 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 in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.<ref>Sutherland, 16-18; LeFaye, "Chronology", 4; Tomalin, 107, 120, 154, 208.</ref>

In her twenty-first year, Austen fell in love. Tom Lefroy, a nephew of neighbours, visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London to train 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. Their feelings for each other were strong and visible to their friends and neighbours. The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was 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.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 4; Fergus, "Biography", 7-8; Tomalin, 112-20, 159; Honan, 105-11.</ref>

Austen began work on a second novel, First Impressions, in 1796 and completed the initial draft in August 1797 (it would later become Pride and Prejudice). 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 "a Manuscript Novel, comprised in three Vols. about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina" at the author's financial risk. Cadell quickly returned Mr. Austen's letter, marked "Declined by Return of Post". Austen may not have known of her father's efforts.<ref>Le Fay, "Chronology", 4-5; Sutherland, 17, 21; quotations from Tomalin, 120-22.</ref> 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.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 5, 7; Fergus, "Biography", 7; Sutherland, 16-18, 21; Tomalin, 120-21; Honan, 122-24.</ref>

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 (epitomized by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)).<ref>Litz, 59-60.</ref> Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen offered Susan to Richard 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. The manuscript remained in Crosby's hands, unpublished, until Austen repurchased the copyright from him in 1816.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 5, 6, 10; Fergus, "Biography", 8-9; Sutherland, 16, 18-19, 20-22; Tomalin, 182, 199, 254.</ref>

Bath and Southampton

In December 1800, Rev. Austen unexpectedly announced his decision to retire from the ministry, leave Steventon, and move the family to Bath. While retirement and travel were good for the elder Austens, there is evidence that Jane Austen was greatly upset by the loss of the only home she had ever known. Perhaps one indicator of Austen's 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.<ref>Sutherland, 21.</ref> Tomalin suggests that this reflected a deep depression that disabled her as a writer, but Honan disagrees, arguing that Austen wrote or revised her manuscripts throughout her creative life, except for a few months after her father died.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 6-8; Fergus, "Biography", 8; Sutherland, 15, 20-22; Tomalin, 168-75; Honan, 215.</ref>

In December 1802, Austen received her only 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-looking man who spoke little, stuttered when he did speak, was aggressive in conversation, and almost completely tactless. However, Austen had known him since both were young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to 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 realized she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology" 6; Fergus, "Biography", p. 7-8; Tomalin, 178-81; Honan, 189-98.</ref> No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austen felt about this proposal.<ref>Le Faye, "Memoirs and Biographies", Jane Austen in Context, 51.</ref> 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".<ref>Letter dated November 18-20, 1814, Jane Austen's Letters, 278-82.</ref>

In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen started but did not complete a new novel, The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid clergyman with little money whose four unmarried daughters are desperately seeking husbands, and the economic security that goes with marriage, before their father dies. Sutherland describes the novel as "a study in the harsh economic realities of dependent women's lives".<ref>Sutherland, 15, 21.</ref> 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.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 7; Tomalin, 182-84; Honan, 203-05.</ref>

Rev. Austen's final illness had struck suddenly, leaving him (as Austen reported to her brother Francis) "quite insensible of his own state", and he died quickly.<ref>MacDonagh, 111; Honan, 212; Tomalin, 186.</ref> Jane, Cassandra, and their mother were left in a precarious financial situation. Edward, James, Henry, and Francis Austen pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters.<ref>Honan, 213-14.</ref> For the next four years, the family's living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity. They lived part of the time in rented quarters in Bath and then, beginning in 1806, in 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.<ref>Tomalin, 194-206.</ref>

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 that was needed to secure immediate publication of the novel, and otherwise requesting the return of the original so that 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. However, Austen did not have the resources to repurchase the book.<ref>Tomalin, 207.</ref>

Chawton

Late in 1808 or early in 1809, Austen's brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled life—the use of a large "cottage" in Chawton village that was part of Edward's nearby estate. Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved into Chawton cottage on 7 July 1809.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 8; Tomalin, 194-206; Honan, 237-45. Honan, 244-45; MacDonagh, 49.</ref> In Chawton, life was quieter than it had been since the family's move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialize with the neighbouring gentry and entertained only when family visited. Austen's niece Anna described the Austen family's life in Chawton: "It was a very quiet life, according to our ideas, but they were great readers, and besides the housekeeping our aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in teaching some girl or boy to read or write."<ref>Grey, "Chawton", in The Jane Austen Companion, 38</ref> Austen wrote almost daily, but privately, and seems to have been relieved of some of the responsibilities of running the household to give her more opportunity to write.<ref>Grey, "Chawton", 37-38; Tomalin, 208, 211-12; Honan, 265-66, 351-52.</ref> In this setting, she was able to be productive as a writer once more.<ref>Doody, "The Shorter Fiction", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 87.</ref>

Published author

During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen successfully published four novels, which were generally well-received. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility,<ref>All of Jane Austen's novel except Pride and Prejudice were 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 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. Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 15-17; Raven, "Book Production", in Jane Austen in Context, 198; Honan, 285-86.</ref> which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among opinion-makers;<ref> Honan, 289-290.</ref> the edition sold out by mid-1813.<ref>Jane 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 hand-made paper) meant that most novels were published in editions of 500 copies or less, in order 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 Jane Austen's novels was driven by the publishers or the author. Since all but one of Jane 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 funds were at risk. Editions of popular works of non-fiction were often much larger. For more information and a discussion of the economics of book publishing during this period, see Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 18, and Raven, "Book Production", 196-203.</ref> Austen's earnings from Sense and Sensibility provided her with some financial and psychological independence.<ref>Honan, 290, Tomalin, 218.</ref> Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice (a revision of First Impressions) in January 1813. He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, garnering three favourable reviews and selling well. By October 1813, Egerton was able to begin selling a second edition.<ref>Sutherland, 16-17, 21; Le Faye, "Chronology" 8-9; Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 19-23; Tomalin, 210-12, 216-20; Honan, 287.</ref> Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. While Mansfield Park was ignored by reviewers, it was a great success with the public. All copies were sold within six months, and Austen's earnings on this novel were larger than for any of her other novels.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 9; Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 22-24; Sutherland, 18-19; Tomalin, 236, 240-41, 315, n. 5.</ref>

Austen learned that the Prince Regent admired her novels and kept a set at each of his residences.<ref>His admiration was by no means reciprocated, however. In a letter of 16 February 1813 to Martha Lloyd, Austen says (referring to the Prince's wife, whom he treated notoriously badly) "I hate her Husband" passage online; Le Faye, Jane Austen's Letters, 207-08.</ref> In November 1815, the Prince Regent's librarian invited Austen to visit the Prince's London residence and hinted that Austen should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to the Prince. Although Austen disliked the Prince, she could scarcely refuse the request.<ref>Austen letter to James Stannier Clarke, 15 November 1815; Clarke letter to Austen, 16 November 1815; Austen letter to John Murray, 23 November 1815, Le Faye, Jane Austen's Letters, 296-98.</ref> 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.<ref>Note on the relationship; Correspondence; Litz, 164-165; Honan, 367-69, describes the episode in detail.</ref>

In mid-1815, Austen left Egerton for John Murray, a better known London publisher,<ref>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." Honan, 364-65; Le Faye, Jane Austen's Letters, 291</ref> 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 not, and this failure offset most of the profits Austen earned on Emma. These were the last of Austen's novels to be published during her lifetime.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 8-9; Sutherland, 16-21; Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 23-27, 30, n.29, 31, n.33; Fergus, "Biography", 10; Tomalin, 256.</ref>

While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began to write a new novel she titled 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 losing 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.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 6, 10; Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 26-27; Tomalin, 252-54.</ref>

Illness and death

Early in 1816, Jane Austen began to feel unwell, showing the first signs of what may have been Addison's disease.<ref>Addison's disease was often a secondary effect of tuberculosis or cancer. For detailed information concerning the retrospective diagnosis, its uncertainties and related controversies, see Honan, 391-92; Le Faye, A Family Record, 236; Grey, "Life of Jane Austen," The Jane Austen Companion, 282; and Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body, 221. Claire Tomalin prefers a diagnosis of a lymphoma such as Hodgkin's disease, arguing that Austen's known symptoms are more consistent with a lymphoma than with Addison's disease. Tomalin, Appendix I, 283-84.</ref> Austen ignored her illness at first and continued to work and to participate in the usual round of family activities. By the middle of that year, her decline was unmistakable to Austen and to her family, and Austen's physical condition began a long, slow, and irregular deterioration culminating in her death the following year.<ref>Honan, 378-79, 385-95.</ref>

Austen continued to work in spite of her illness. She became dissatisfied with the ending of The Elliots and rewrote the final two chapters, finishing them on 6 August 1816.<ref>The manuscript of the revised final chapters of Persuasion is the only manuscript in Austen's own handwriting for any of her published novels that survived. Tomalin, 255.</ref> In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel she called The Brothers (later titled Sanditon upon its first publication in 1925) and completed twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably because her illness prevented her from continuing. Austen made light of her condition to others, describing it as "Bile" and rheumatism, but as her disease progressed she experienced increasing difficulty walking or finding the energy for other activities. By mid-April, Austen was confined to her bed. In May, their brother Henry escorted Jane and Cassandra to Winchester for medical treatment. Jane Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Through his clerical connections, Henry 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, mentions the "extraordinary endowments of her mind", but does not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer.<ref>Le Faye, "Chronology", 10-11; Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", 26-27; Tomalin, 254-71; Honan, 385-405.</ref>

Posthumous publication

After Austen's death, Cassandra and Henry Austen arranged with Murray for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set in December 1817.<ref>They chose the final titles and the title page is dated 1818.</ref> Henry Austen contributed a Biographical Note which for the first time identified his sister as the author of the novels. Tomalin describes it as "a loving and polished eulogy".<ref>Tomalin, 272.</ref> Sales were good for a year—only 321 copies remained unsold at the end of 1818—and then declined. Murray disposed of the remaining copies in 1820, and Austen's novels remained out of print for twelve years.<ref>Tomalin, 321, n.1 and 3; Gilson, "Editions and Publishing History", in The Jane Austen Companion, 136-37.</ref> In 1832, Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of Austen's novels and, beginning in either December 1832 or January 1833, published them in five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, Bentley published the first collected edition of Austen's works. From that time until today, Austen's novels have been continuously in print.<ref>Gilson, "Editions and Publishing History", p. 137; Gilson, "Later publishing history, with illustrations," Jane Austen in Context, p. 127; Southam, "Criticism, 1870-1940", 102.</ref>

Reception

Main articles: Reception history of Jane Austen and Janeite

Contemporary responses

Austen's works brought her little renown during her lifetime because she published anonymously. Although they received only a few positive reviews, Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist of the day, contributed one of them (although it, too, was published anonymously). Using the review as a platform from which to defend the then disreputable genre of the novel, he praised Austen's works, celebrating her ability to copy "from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader...a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him".<ref>Southam, "Scott in the Quarterly Review", Vol. 1, 58; Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early", Jane Austen in Context, 86; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814-1870", The Jane Austen Companion, 94-96.</ref> The other important early review of Austen's works was published by Richard Whately in 1821. He drew favourable comparisons between Austen and such acknowledged greats as Homer and Shakespeare, praising the dramatic qualities of her narrative. Whately and Scott set the tone for almost all subsequent nineteenth-century Austen criticism.<ref>Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early", Jane Austen in Context, 89-90; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814-1870", The Jane Austen Companion, 97; Watt, "Introduction", 4-5.</ref>

Nineteenth century

Because Austen's novels failed to conform to Romantic and Victorian expectations that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated by an egregious display of sound and color in the writing",<ref>Duffy, "Criticism, 1814-1870", The Jane Austen Companion, 98-99; MacDonagh, 146; Watt, "Introduction", 3-4.</ref> nineteenth-century critics and audiences generally preferred the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 1, 2; Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 1.</ref> Although Austen's novels were republished in Britain beginning in the 1830s and remained steady sellers, they were not bestsellers.<ref>Johnson, "Austen cults and cultures", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 211; Gilson, "Later publishing history, with illustrations," p. 127.</ref>

Austen did have many admiring readers in the nineteenth century who considered themselves part of a literary elite: they viewed their appreciation of Austen's works as a mark of their cultural taste. This became a common theme of literary criticism of Austen's works during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes expressed this in a series of enthusiastic articles published in the 1840s and 1850s. In "The Novels of Jane Austen", published anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine in 1859, Lewes praised Austen's novels for their "economy of art...the easy adaptation of means to ends, with no aid from superfluous elements" and compared her works to Shakespeare's.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 1, 152; Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 20-21.</ref>

With the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870, Austen was introduced to a wider public as "dear aunt Jane", the respectable maiden aunt. However, critics continued to assert that her works were sophisticated and only appropriate for those who could truly plumb their depths.<ref>Southam, "Criticism, 1870-1940", 102-03; see also Watt, "Introduction", 6; Johnson, "Austen cults and cultures", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 211.</ref> The publication of the Memoir spurred the reissue of Austen's novels—the first popular editions were released in 1883 in a sixpenny series by Routledge. Fancy illustrated editions and collectors' sets quickly followed.<ref>Southam, “Introduction”, Vol. 2, 58-62.</ref>

It is only after the publication of the Memoir that readers started to develop a personal identification with Austen.<ref>Lynch, "Cult of Jane Austen", Jane Austen in Context, 112.</ref> Author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry".<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 47.</ref> Around the turn of the century, members of the literary elite reacted against this popularization of Austen. They referred to themselves as Janeites in order to distinguish themselves from the masses who did not properly understand Austen.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 46; Johnson, "Austen cults and cultures", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 213.</ref> One member of this literary elite was Henry James, who 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".<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 70.</ref> However, James responded negatively to what he described as "a beguiled infatuation" with Austen, a rising tide of public interest that exceeded Austen's "intrinsic merit and interest".<ref>Southam, "Henry James on Jane Austen", Vol. 2, 230.</ref>

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the first books of criticism on Austen were published. In fact, after the publication of the Memoir, more criticism was published on Austen in two years than had appeared in the previous fifty.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 1, 1.</ref> According to Brian Southam, who has made a study of Austen reception, while Austen criticism increased in amount and, to some degree, in quality after 1870, "a certain uniformity" pervaded it. Austen's novels were "praised for their elegance of form and their surface 'finish'; for the realism of their fictional world, the variety and vitality of their characters; for their pervasive humour; and for their gentle and undogmatic morality and its unsermonising delivery. The novels are prized for their 'perfection'. Yet it is seen to be a narrow perfection, achieved within the bounds of domestic comedy."<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 13-14.</ref> However, some astute critics (largely ignored at the time), such as Richard Simpson and Margaret Oliphant, introduced key ideas that would later be taken up and developed by Austen scholars. For example, in a review of the Memoir, Simpson described Austen as a serious yet ironic critic of English society and argued that she used humor as a means of social critique.<ref>Watt, "Introduction", 5-6.</ref>

Although Austen's novels had been published in the United States since 1832, it was not until after 1870 that there was a distinctive American response to Austen.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 49-50.</ref> Austen was not democratic enough for American tastes and her work did not explore the frontier themes that had come to define American literature.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 52.</ref> In his book Following the Equator, for example, Mark Twain, Austen's foremost American critic, described the library on his ship: "Jane Austen's books...are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."<ref>Southam, "Mark Twain on Jane Austen", Vol. 2, 232.</ref>

Twentieth century

While there had been glimmers of brilliant Austen scholarship early in the twentieth century, it was not until the 1930s that Austen became solidly entrenched within academia. Several important works paved the way. The first was R. W. Chapman's magisterial edition of Austen's collected works. Not only was it the first scholarly edition of Austen's works, it was also first scholarly edition of any English novelist. The Chapman text has remained the basis for all subsequent published editions of Austen's works.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 99-100; see also Watt, "Introduction", 10-11; Gilson, "Later Publishing History, with Illustrations", 149-50; Johnson, “Austen cults and cultures”, 218.</ref> The second important milestone was Oxford Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley's 1911 essay, "Jane Austen: A Lecture", which is "generally regarded as the starting-point for the serious academic approach to Jane Austen".<ref>Brian Southam, quoted in Trott, "Critical Responses, 1830-1970", 92; Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 79.</ref> Bradley emphasized Austen's ties to Samuel Johnson, arguing that she was a moralist as well as humorist; in this he was "totally original", according to Southam.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 79; see also Watt, "Introduction", 10; Trott, "Critical Responses, 1830-1970", 93.</ref> Bradley established the groupings of Austen's "early" and "late" novels, which are still used by scholars today.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 79.</ref>

The 1920s saw a boom in Austen scholarship, but it was not until the publication in 1939 of Mary Lascelles's Jane Austen and Her Art that the academic study of Austen really took hold.<ref>Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 107-109, 124.</ref> Lascelles's innovative work included an analysis of the books Jane Austen read and the effect of her reading on her work, an extended analysis of Austen's style, and her "narrative art". At the time concern arose over the fact that academics were taking over Austen criticism and it was becoming increasingly esoteric—a debate that has continued to the beginning of the twenty-first century.<ref>Southam, "Criticism 1870-1940", 108; Watt, "Introduction", 10-11; Stovel, "Further Reading", 233; Southam, "Introduction", Vol. 2, 127; Todd, 20.</ref>

In a spurt of revisionist views in the 1940s, scholars approached Austen more sceptically and argued that she was a subversive writer. These revisionist views, together with F. R. Leavis's and Ian Watt's pronouncement that Austen was one of the great writers of English fiction, did much to cement Austen's reputation amongst academics.<ref>Johnson, “Austen cults and cultures”, 219; Todd, 20.</ref> They agreed that she "combined [Henry Fielding's and Samuel Richardson's] qualities of interiority and irony, realism and satire to form an author superior to both".<ref>Todd, 20.</ref> The period since World War II has seen a flowering of scholarship on Austen using a diversity of critical approaches, including feminist theory, and perhaps most controversially, postcolonial theory.

The disconnect between the popular appreciation of Austen, particularly that by modern Janeites, and the academic appreciation of Austen that began in the 1870s and continued with Lascelles has widened considerably. Austen scholar Claudia Johnson describes the "the ludic enthusiasm of...amateur reading clubs, whose 'performances' include teas, costume balls, games, readings, and dramatic representations, staged with a campy anglophilia in North America, and a brisker antiquarian meticulousness in England, and whose interests range from Austenian dramatizations, to fabrics, to genealogies, and to weekend study trips".<ref>Johnson, “Austen cults and cultures”, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 223.</ref> She argues that academics are prone to look askance at these endeavours, although the fact that such activities are now deemed worthy of study suggests that this attitude may be changing.<ref>Johnson, “Austen cults and cultures”, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 224.</ref>

List of works

Novels

In order of first publication:

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Persuasion (1817) (posthumous)
• Northanger Abbey (1817) (posthumous)

Unfinished works

• Lady Susan
• The Watsons
• Sanditon

Selected juvenilia

• Love and Freindship
• Catharine, or the Bower
• The Beautifull Cassandra
• The History of England

See also

• Jane Austen in popular culture
• Timeline of Jane Austen

Notes

Bibliography

Primary works

• Austen, Jane. Catharine and Other Writings. Ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-282823-1.

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Biographical works

• Austen, Henry Thomas. "Biographical Notice of the Author". Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. London: John Murray, 1817.
• Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen. 1926. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
• Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, A Family Record. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1913.
• Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1991. ISBN 0-333-44701-8.
• Honan, Park. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01451-1.
• Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-283297-2.
• Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-53417-8.
• Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0-679-44628-1.

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Literary criticism

Essay collections

• Alexander, Christine and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 10-0-521-81293-3.
• Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-521-49867-8.
• Grey, J. David, ed. The Jane Austen Companion. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-52-545540-0.
• Lynch, Deidre, ed. Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-691-05005-8.
• Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1812-1870. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. ISBN 0-7100-2942-X.
• Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870-1940. Vol. 2. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. ISBN 0-7102-0189-3.
• Todd, Janet, ed. Jane Austen In Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6.
• Watt, Ian, ed. Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. ISBN 0-130-53769-0.

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Monographs and articles

• Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction. London: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-19-506160-8
• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-19-812968-8
• Collins, Irene. Jane Austen and the Clergy. London: The Hambledon Press, 1994. ISBN 1-85285-114-7.
• Devlin, D. D. Jane Austen and Education. London: Macmillan, 1975. ISBN 0-333-14431-2.
• Duckworth, Alistair M. The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. ISBN 0-8018-1269-0.
• Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel. Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1983. ISBN 0-389-20228-2.
• Ferguson, Moira. "Mansfield Park, Slavery, Colonialism, and Gender". Oxford Literary Review 13 (1991): 118-39.
• Galperin, William. The Historical Austen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. ISBN 0-812-23687-4.
• Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-65213-8.
• Gubar, Susan and Sandra Gilbert. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-300-02596-3.
• Harding, D. W., "Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen". Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Watt. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
• Jenkyns, Richard. A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-927761-7.
• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN 0-226-40139-1.
• Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction. Brighton: Harvester, 1983. ISBN 0-710-80468-7.
• Koppel, Gene. The Religious Dimension in Jane Austen's Novels. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988.
• Lascelles, Mary. Jane Austen and Her Art. [Original publication date]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
• Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad. London: Chatto & Windus, 1960.
• Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Lynch, Deidre. The Economy of Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-49820-4.
• MacDonagh, Oliver. Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-05084-4.
• Miller, D. A. Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-691-12387-X.
• Mudrick, Marvin. Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.
• Page, Norman. The Language of Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. ISBN 0-631-08280-8.
• Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0-226-67528-9.
• Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. ISBN 0-679-75054-1.
• Todd, Janet. The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-521-67469-7.
• Waldron, Mary. Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-521-00388-1.
• Wiltshire, John. Recreating Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-521-00282-6.
• Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: The Picture of Health. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-41476-8.

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External links

Modèle:Wikisource author Modèle:Wikiquote

Online works

• Works by Jane Austen - etexts by Electronic Literature Foundation
• Modèle:Gutenberg author
• Works by Jane Austen - e-books in HTML
• Works by Jane Austen - printable PDF ebooks
• Works by Jane Austen - HTML, PDF, text formats from ebooktakeaway.com
• Works by Jane Austen - for cell phones
• A Memoir of Jane Austen (1871 edition) by James Edward Austen-Leigh from Project Gutenberg

Author information

• The History of England, written by Austen at the age of sixteen (brief description at the British Library on-line).
• Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton
• The Jane Austen Centre in Bath
• [Jane Austen Catégorie Arts/Literature/Authors/A/Austen,_Jane/] de l’annuaire dmoz.

Fan sites and societies

• The Republic of Pemberley: the largest Jane Austen site on the web.
• The Jane Austen Society of Australia
• The Jane Austen Society of North America
• The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom

Modèle:Jane Austen

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