RAY CLEERE recalls the life and career of one of the greatest writers of all time
Jane Austen was one of England’s writers who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. She published four novels during her lifetime: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (1811); ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1813); ‘Mansfield Park’ (1814), and ‘Emma’ (1815).
In those and in ‘Persuasion’ and ‘Northanger Abbey’ (published together posthumously in 1817), she vividly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century. Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners, but they also became timeless classics which remained critical and popular successes for over 200 years after her death. Those works reflect her enduring legacy.
Jane Austen was born 250 years ago on December 16th, 1775, in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, Reverend George Austen, was rector at the time. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight: six boys and two girls.
Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His wife, Cassandra (nee Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.
Jane Austen’s lively and affectionate family circle provided a stimulating context for her writing. Moreover, her experience was carried far beyond Steventon rectory by an extensive network of relationships by blood and friendship.
It was that world of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the neighbourhood, and the country town, with occasional visits to Bath and to London, that she used in the settings, characters, and subject matters of her novels.
Her earliest known writings date from about 1787, and between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material which has survived in three manuscript notebooks: ‘Volume the First’, ‘Volume the Second’, and ‘Volume the Third’.
These contain plays, verses, short novels, and other prose and show Jane Austen engaged in the parody of existing literary forms, notably the genres of the sentimental novel and sentimental comedy. Her passage to a more serious view of life of her earliest writings is evident in ‘Lady Susan’, a short novel written about 1793 or 1794 and was not published until 1871.
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