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Fiction

Notes 8.1 Jane Austen–Emma: Introduction to the Author and to the Text

8.1.1 Introduction to the Author

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon rectory in Hampshire, England. Her
father, Reverend George Austen (1731-1805) was the rector at Steventon and had married
Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739-1827), a daughter of a patrician family, in 1764. Austen was the
youngest daughter of the large, closely-knit family, with six brothers and one sister. Austen
was particularly close to her sister, Cassandra, and her brother, Henry, who became his sister’s
literary agent.
When Austen was eight years old, she had Cassandra were sent to Oxford and then Southampton
to be educated. After an outbreak of typhus at the school, during which Jane nearly died, both
girls returned home to continue their education. From 1785 to 1786, Austen and her sister
attended the Reading Ladies Boarding School, where they studied French, spelling, needlework,
music, and dancing. Forced to return home for economic reasons, Austen continued to develop
her literary mind under the guidance of her father, who maintained a large library and indulged
his daughters with materials for writing and drawing.
Beginning in her teen years, Austen wrote poems, stories, and comic pieces for the amusement
of her family. She compiled several of the pieces written between 1787 and 1793 into three
bound notebooks, which are now referred to as Austen’s “Juvenalia.” Austen was also exposed
to drama and comedy; the younger children in the family often staged theatrical productions
at home. As she continued her experiments in writing, Austen became adept at parodying the
sentimental and Gothic style of eighteenth-century novels. Among her early works, one finds
a novel with a deliberately misspelled title, “Love and Friendship,” a satirical “History of
England,” and the epistolary work, “Lady Susan.” During this time, Austen also became to
sketch out ideas for the novel that would later become “Sense and Sensibility.”
In 1795, Austen met Tom Lefroy, the nephew of their neighbors at Steventon. According to her
letters to Cassandra, Austen spent a great deal of time with Tom Lefroy and may have had
romantic feelings for him. Unfortunately, a marriage between the two was impractical, and
LeFroy’s family soon sent him away. After her brief romance with Lefroy, Austen began work
on a second novel called “First Impressions,” which would later become “Pride and Prejudice.”
Austen then began a serious revision of her the initial sketches for “Sense and Sensibility,” as
well as working on a satire on the Gothic literary genre called “Northanger Abbey.”

Task Write about the characteristics of Austen’s Novels.

The Austen family resided at Steventon until 1801, when Reverend Austen announced his
retirement from the ministry and moved the family to Bath. Austen’s mixed feelings about
moving from her childhood home was clear by her sudden lack of productivity as a writer:
during her time at Bath, she only made minimal revisions to the draft of “Northanger Abbey”
and started (and abandoned) a fourth novel. While in Bath, Austen also received her only
marriage proposal: from Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of family friends and an
Oxford graduate six years her junior. Although he was apparently unremarkable both physically
and intellectually, his considerable fortune made him an attractive bachelor. Austen accepted
initially, but changed her mind the following day and rescinded her promise. For Austen,
turning down the marriage proposal was a significant decision, since marriage would have
freed her from the embarrassing situation of being dependent on her family. The marriage
would also have provided a home for Cassandra and could even have helped her brothers in
their efforts to secure better careers.

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