Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire, a little town in the south of England.
She was one of the eight children of the rector of the village George Austen and Cassandra Leigh.
In the early years, she was brought up by a wet nurse and her father taught her French and Italian language.
In 1783, according to family customs, Jane and her sister Cassandra went to Oxford and later to Southampton, in order to improve their education with Mrs. Ann Cawley.

Between 1795 and 1798 she wrote first drafts and versions of novels such as Juvenilia, three collections of novels and parodies, which, with humorous or gothic tones, emulated the literature of the time and entertained the narrow circle of relatives. All the novels, in fact, are dedicated to friends and relatives.

In December 1795, Jane Austen met Thomas Langlois Lefroy, the grandson of some of Steventon's neighbors, and they fell in love.
The Lefroy family considered Reverend Austen's daughter socially inadequate for young Tom and suggested Tom to get away from Steventon and to continue his julishers statements.
So he moved away from the town in January 1796 and, thus, the marriage became impossible.

In 1801 her father retired and settled with his wife and daughters in Bath, then they moved to a large cottage in Chawton in 1805.
This is the most fruitful period in Jane Austen’s life as a novelist.
In 1811 Sense and Sensibility was published anonymously “by a lady”. Next years, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma were published and well received by both critics and the general public.

In 1816 Jane Austen was taken seriously ill.
Among the various hypotheses about her death, the most accredited is that Austen has been affected by Addison's disease, which was incurable in that time.
In 1817 she and her sister Cassandra went to Winchester, in search of an appropriate care, but, meantime, Jane Austen died and was buried in the cathedral of the city.
In the last months of her life, she started the writing of Sanditon, a satire about the progress and its consequences. This novel, unfortunately, was left unfinished due to the aggravation of her illness.

Jane Austen’s novels were published anonymously, simply with some sentences like "by a lady" or "by the author of Sense and Sensibility". Although in some aristocratic circles the author's name was known, only with the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, her brother Henry revealed publicly the author's name.

All her novels are set in the provincial world of southern England, and the characters generally belong to the rural middle class.
They are precisely described and for each we are given the essential facts that make up their place in society: age, income, its source (land or investments), marital situation and prospects (single, married, widowed) and social position.
They are lively, rounded characters and show the author’s fine psychological insight and remarkable narrative skills.

Jane Austen’s characters lead a quiet country life and the only disturbing element is love.
Austen satirizes the exaggerated sentimentality of contemporary novels and rejects a purely romantic and sentimental view of love.
The novels centre on the experience of a young woman who, through a series of errors and delusions, develops her understanding of herself and of other people.
The novels end with the marriage between the young woman and a young man, who saves her by these errors and delusions.

This characteristic belongs to the Quixotic genre. Austen’s descriptions of life depend on dialogue and irony.
Dialogue is clear, witty and precise, rendering commonplace things and characters interesting.
Her irony is always expressed in nicely balanced and acute observations.

Adopting these narrative techniques, Jane Austen is considered un-Romantic because she gently mocks human frailties.