Jane Austen is my favorite novelist. I read all her six novels. Really they are very interesting, and the main thing her all six novels have a universal appeal.
Austen is by common consent an author remarkably sure of her values. She is the novelist, whose work is considered part of the western canon. Her insight into woman’s lives and her mastery of form and irony have made her one of the most noted and influential novelists of her era despite being only moderately successful during her lifetime. She is generally acknowledged to be one of the great English novelists.
For the first time the novel at her hands acquires perfection of form and structure. She has remained unsurpassed in her artistic mastery of limited materials. She is the writer whose novels are among the acknowledged classics of English literature, studied in schools and universities throughout the world (at the least count in thirty-five languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Bengali), with an enormous bibliography of scholarship and criticism. Yet the six novels also attract an audience quite unconcerned about Austen’s critical reputation and status, who turns to the novel simply for enjoyment. This is the only instance in English literature where Samuel Johnson’s image of ‘the common reader’ really comes alive: the idea that the ultimate test of literary greatness is not in the formal recognition of the academics but rests with ‘the common- sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices,’ and that this individual judgement should prevail over ‘the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning.’
Austen was born at the rectory in Steventon, Hampshire, on 17th December 1775. She was the seventh child of the Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and his wife Cassandra Austen (1739-1827). She is one of the descendants of King Edward III of England. Her father was the comfortably prosperous rector of the parish and was an important influence in Austen’s early writing career. She was the youngest but one of the family, her only sister Cassandra, being two years older, was closer to her than any other human being. They shared a room until the day Austen died, and their mother used to say, “if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”
Austen’s oldest brother, James, became a clergyman; her second brother, George, was subject to fits and was never referred in the family chronicles; Edward was adopted by the rich knight family and grew up to take their name and become a respected landowner. Austen’s favorite brother Henry was the charming drifter, the inveterate ideal-man, and the incurable optimist who became, among other things, a banker, a soldier, and his sister’s sometime public relations man, against her wishes, and ended up a bankrupt, and finally, in optimistic desperation, a clergyman. Francis and Charles, who bracketed Austen, one born just before, one just after, both became admirals and through the years has been lumped together as “Jane Austen’s sailor brothers.”
She was mostly tutored at home, and irregularly at school, but she received a broader education than many women of her time. In 1783, she was educated briefly by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, in Oxford, but was brought home due to a local outbreak of disease. Two years later she attended the Abbey Boarding School in Reading, reportedly wanting to follow her sister, Cassandra. Even so, less than a year later the girls were back at home, their schooldays at an end. Happily George Austen’s library helped fill the deficiency in his daughter’s education and it was his wish that she should browse amongst the hundreds of volumes he kept stacked on the bookshelves. She read extensively, enjoying the works of Fielding, Swift, Johnson and Defoe. She was also fond of Gothic novels like The Castle of Wolfenbach and Horrid Mysteries, as well as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. To his credit Austen’s father never attempted to censor or limit his daughter’s literary choices and at twelve she was already writing book reviews and essays for The Loiterer, a periodical produced by two of her brothers. Her first novel, Love and Friendship, was written at the age of fourteen. 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.
Austen's literary talent was precocious and by the age of twenty she had also completed the full-length manuscript of Lady Susan and was working on Elinor and Marianne, which was eventually published as Sense and Sensibility. The plot of Lady Susan was rather racy for the times and rumors have it that it was inspired by the conduct of Mrs. Craven, the grandmother of Austen’s friend Martha Lloyd.
Compared with writers like Dickens or her contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft, the course of her life does seem to run exceedingly quietly and smoothly. Really her life was relatively uneventful. Her nephew states in Memoir: “Of events her life was singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.”Her life in the country consisted of long walks and socializing with her many Hampshire friends. Her favorite and most enjoyable activity was dancing and she attended many of the neighborhood balls. That is why her family’s announcement in 1801 came as considerable shock to her that they would be moving away to Bath. She greatly disliked the confines of a busy town and missed the life she once had at Steventon. In 1802, on the eve of her twenty-seventh birthday Austen received a marriage proposal from a wealthy but “big and awkward” man named Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years her junior. Such a marriage would have “established” her (in the terminology of the day), and freed her from some of the constraints and “dependency” then associated with the role of a spinster who must rely on her family for support. Such considerations influenced her to accept his offer first, but next day she changed her mind and refused him. She did not believe in that marriage, which is held without love.
George Austen’s death in 1805 left Cassandra and her two daughters, Jane and Cassandra, in a devastating financial state. From one house to another and some visiting, Mrs. Austen and her daughters settled in Southampton, sharing a roomy house with the Francis Austen. In 1809, a final move was made to Chawton cottage on the Hampshire estate of Edward Knight. This was the place where Austen felt at home. She again started writing as well as revision of early written works. Sense and Sensibility was given a final polish and published at the author’s own expense in 1811, and Austen set to work upon Mansfield Park. Sense and Sensibility met with no spectacular success, but was sufficiently well received for a publisher to be willing to undertake the risk of launching the newly revised Pride and Prejudice in 1813. Mansfield Park was published in May 1814 and by November, Austen was able to report that the first edition was all sold.
In the autumn of 1815, Henry Austen had a long, serious illness during which Austen nursed him devotedly, and her own health suffered in consequence. In December 1815 Emma appeared duly dedicated to Royal Highness Prince Regent, who was an admirer of her work. In 1816, Persuasion was written, and to be laid aside, eventually published after her death by Henry Austen, bound up with Northanger Abbey. Her health already tried by anxieties on Henry’s behalf began to fail seriously in 1816, and by 1817 she was invalid to the extent of spending much of her time resting on two chairs. Even sometimes, she was unable to leave her bedroom and she owned to, “a good deal of fever at times.” Nevertheless, she wrote part of a new novel (which was published in 1825, under the title of Sandition), between January and March 1817.
Austen’s illness came to be regarded in the family as decline. In May 1817, she and Cassandra moved into Winchester in order to have more expert medical advice. On July 18th, 1817, Austen died at the age of forty-one. But it was only in the 1960s that the cause of her death was established from the symptoms as she described in her letters during the last year of her life. In the British Medical Journal for July, 1964, the doctor who made the diagnosis wrote: “Jane Austen did something more than write excellent novels- she also described the first recorded case of Addison’s disease of the adrenal bodies.”She was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
For the first time the novel at her hands acquires perfection of form and structure. She has remained unsurpassed in her artistic mastery of limited materials. She is the writer whose novels are among the acknowledged classics of English literature, studied in schools and universities throughout the world (at the least count in thirty-five languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Bengali), with an enormous bibliography of scholarship and criticism. Yet the six novels also attract an audience quite unconcerned about Austen’s critical reputation and status, who turns to the novel simply for enjoyment. This is the only instance in English literature where Samuel Johnson’s image of ‘the common reader’ really comes alive: the idea that the ultimate test of literary greatness is not in the formal recognition of the academics but rests with ‘the common- sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices,’ and that this individual judgement should prevail over ‘the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning.’
Austen’s oldest brother, James, became a clergyman; her second brother, George, was subject to fits and was never referred in the family chronicles; Edward was adopted by the rich knight family and grew up to take their name and become a respected landowner. Austen’s favorite brother Henry was the charming drifter, the inveterate ideal-man, and the incurable optimist who became, among other things, a banker, a soldier, and his sister’s sometime public relations man, against her wishes, and ended up a bankrupt, and finally, in optimistic desperation, a clergyman. Francis and Charles, who bracketed Austen, one born just before, one just after, both became admirals and through the years has been lumped together as “Jane Austen’s sailor brothers.”
She was mostly tutored at home, and irregularly at school, but she received a broader education than many women of her time. In 1783, she was educated briefly by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, in Oxford, but was brought home due to a local outbreak of disease. Two years later she attended the Abbey Boarding School in Reading, reportedly wanting to follow her sister, Cassandra. Even so, less than a year later the girls were back at home, their schooldays at an end. Happily George Austen’s library helped fill the deficiency in his daughter’s education and it was his wish that she should browse amongst the hundreds of volumes he kept stacked on the bookshelves. She read extensively, enjoying the works of Fielding, Swift, Johnson and Defoe. She was also fond of Gothic novels like The Castle of Wolfenbach and Horrid Mysteries, as well as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. To his credit Austen’s father never attempted to censor or limit his daughter’s literary choices and at twelve she was already writing book reviews and essays for The Loiterer, a periodical produced by two of her brothers. Her first novel, Love and Friendship, was written at the age of fourteen. 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.
Austen's literary talent was precocious and by the age of twenty she had also completed the full-length manuscript of Lady Susan and was working on Elinor and Marianne, which was eventually published as Sense and Sensibility. The plot of Lady Susan was rather racy for the times and rumors have it that it was inspired by the conduct of Mrs. Craven, the grandmother of Austen’s friend Martha Lloyd.
George Austen’s death in 1805 left Cassandra and her two daughters, Jane and Cassandra, in a devastating financial state. From one house to another and some visiting, Mrs. Austen and her daughters settled in Southampton, sharing a roomy house with the Francis Austen. In 1809, a final move was made to Chawton cottage on the Hampshire estate of Edward Knight. This was the place where Austen felt at home. She again started writing as well as revision of early written works. Sense and Sensibility was given a final polish and published at the author’s own expense in 1811, and Austen set to work upon Mansfield Park. Sense and Sensibility met with no spectacular success, but was sufficiently well received for a publisher to be willing to undertake the risk of launching the newly revised Pride and Prejudice in 1813. Mansfield Park was published in May 1814 and by November, Austen was able to report that the first edition was all sold.
In the autumn of 1815, Henry Austen had a long, serious illness during which Austen nursed him devotedly, and her own health suffered in consequence. In December 1815 Emma appeared duly dedicated to Royal Highness Prince Regent, who was an admirer of her work. In 1816, Persuasion was written, and to be laid aside, eventually published after her death by Henry Austen, bound up with Northanger Abbey. Her health already tried by anxieties on Henry’s behalf began to fail seriously in 1816, and by 1817 she was invalid to the extent of spending much of her time resting on two chairs. Even sometimes, she was unable to leave her bedroom and she owned to, “a good deal of fever at times.” Nevertheless, she wrote part of a new novel (which was published in 1825, under the title of Sandition), between January and March 1817.
Austen’s illness came to be regarded in the family as decline. In May 1817, she and Cassandra moved into Winchester in order to have more expert medical advice. On July 18th, 1817, Austen died at the age of forty-one. But it was only in the 1960s that the cause of her death was established from the symptoms as she described in her letters during the last year of her life. In the British Medical Journal for July, 1964, the doctor who made the diagnosis wrote: “Jane Austen did something more than write excellent novels- she also described the first recorded case of Addison’s disease of the adrenal bodies.”She was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
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