Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on December 16,1774, in the tiny village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, served as the town rector. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen, was the daughter of a rector herself, and Jane was the seventh of eight children. She had an older brother, George, who suffered from epilepsy and did not live with the family. Wealthy, childless relatives who were very involved with the boy throughout his childhood adopted the Austen's third son, Edward. The remaining six children, however, lived with their parents in the plain, comfortable village rector. Jane's closest relationship within her family was to her adored older sister, Cassandra. Three years apart in age and the only girls among the eight children, the two were close friends from childhood onward. Cassandra was once engaged to a young man who died of yellow fever. Similarly, Jane was very involved with a clergyman who died before they could become engaged. Neither of the !sisters ever married, and the two lived together with their mother until Jane's death in 1817. In 1801, George Austen, Jane's father, retired as rector of Steventon and moved with his wife and two daughters to Bath, where he died in
s after the move to Bath, "Susan" was sold to the publishers Crosby and Company for ten pounds. The book was never published, however, and was bought back for the same amount by Austen six years later. Austen also began The Watsons in 1803, a novel she put aside and never resumed after her father's death two years later. In the difficult years following Mr. Austen's death, Jane appears to have abandoned her writing entirely, resuming it only after the family was at last settled at Chawton in 1809, where she embarked on a period of tremendous productivity. The years between 1809 and 1811 Austen devoted to Sense and Sensibility, and in 1811 the book became her first published work. That same year, she began work on Mansfield Park, which continued throughout the next two years. The following year, 1812, Austen began extensive revisions on "First Impressions," abandoning its epistolary form for that of a traditional novel. The book was published in 1813 as Pride and Prejudi! most often had early glimpses of Jane's novels in progress. A less fortuitous result of the sisters' close bond, however, was Cassandra's decision following Jane's death to edit or destroy any of her sister's letters and papers that she feared might cast Jane in an unfavorable light. For Austen scholars, Cassandra's loyalty has been a source of much speculation and regret. Jane Austen was one of the greatest of women authors. Yet so great is her talent and her insight into the complexities of human nature that the seeming simplicity of her books belies the universality of their perceptions. In turning her writer's gaze on the world around her, Austen reveals deeper truths that apply to the world at large. Her portraits of social interaction, while specific to a particular and very carefully delineated place and time, are nevertheless the result of timeless human characteristics. If one looks beneath the details of social manners and mores that abound in Austen's novels, what emerges is their author's clear-eyed grasp of the intricacies of human behavior. What is also readily apparent is that human behavior was a source of great amusement to Austen. Her novels are gentle satires, written with delicate irony and incisive wit. The famous opening lines of Pride and Prejud
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Approximate Word count = 1531
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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