Biography
JANE AUSTEN
By: Alejandra Ayala
Novelist
01 General data
02 Life
03 Austen’s Novels
04 The future of Jane Austen
today
In d e x 05 Legacy
06 Film and TV adaptations
General Data
Jane Austen was an English writer 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 these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published together
posthumously, 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 that
remained critical and popular successes for over two centuries after her death. These
works reflect her enduring legacy.
Life
Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of
Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George
Austen, was rector. 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 (née 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 this 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 was to use
in the settings, characters, and subject
matter of her novels.
Her earliest known writings date from about 1787,
and between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of
material that 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 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
from the exuberant high spirits and
extravagances of her earliest writings is
evident in Lady Susan, a short epistolary
novel written about 1793–94 (and not
published until 1871). This portrait of a
woman bent on the exercise of her own
powerful mind and personality to the point
of social self-destruction is, in effect, a study
of frustration and of woman’s fate in a
society that has no use for her talents.
In 1802 it seems likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-
year-old heir of a Hampshire family, but the next morning changed her mind.
There are also a number of mutually contradictory stories connecting her
with someone with whom she fell in love but who died very soon after. Since
Austen’s novels are so deeply concerned with love and marriage, there is
some point in attempting to establish the facts of these relationships.
Unfortunately, the evidence is unsatisfactory and incomplete. Cassandra
was a jealous guardian of her sister’s private life, and after Jane’s death she
censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others. But
Jane Austen’s own novels provide indisputable evidence that their author
understood the experience of love and of love disappointed.
Between 1795 and 1799 he attempted to publish the first edition of his
famous story of pride and prejudice, which was rejected by the publisher for
not being good enough. Between those dates also, he had to experience
multiple moves and changes as he had to follow his father and the rest of his
family, ending up with family friends and then retiring once again to a
permanent place in Chawtown.
Living here, between 1803 to 1811 and in 1817, his greatest works, such as Pride
and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility, managed to be
published, always receiving support from his brother. Later, he faced the
death of both parents only two years apart.
She had the satisfaction of seeing her work in print and well reviewed and of
knowing that the novels were widely read. They were so much enjoyed by the
prince regent (later George IV) that he had a set in each of his residences,
and Emma, at a discreet royal command, was “respectfully dedicated” to him.
The reviewers praised the novels for their morality and entertainment,
admired the character drawing, and welcomed the domestic realism as a
refreshing change from the romantic melodrama then in vogue.
For the last 18 months of her life, Austen was busy writing. Early in 1816, at
the onset of her fatal illness, she set down the burlesque Plan of a Novel,
According to Hints from Various Quarters (first published in 1871). Until
August 1816 she was occupied with Persuasion, and she looked again at the
manuscript of “Susan” (Northanger Abbey).
In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking satire on
health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained unfinished because of
Austen’s declining health. She supposed that she was suffering from bile, but
the symptoms make possible a modern clinical assessment that she was
suffering from Addison disease. Her condition fluctuated, but in April she
made her will, and in May she was taken to Winchester to be under the care
of an expert surgeon. She died on July 18, and six days later she was buried in
Winchester Cathedral.
As seen in her life, Austen never married, some based on the social
records of the time claim that she fell deeply in love with a man
with whom she could not arrange her affections, due to differences
in status. Capturing in her most popular story "Pride and Prejudice"
the dynamics of her situation and the personalities of her and her
loved ones in both protagonists. Those who were able to make their
love story come true
Austen`s Novels
Sense and Sensibilty Pride and Prejuice Mansfield Park
1811 1813 1814
Austen`s Novels
Emma Northanger Abbey Persuasion
1815 1818 1818
posthumous works posthumous works
The Future of Jane Austen Today
For the time in which she lived, Jane Austen
could never imagine that her works, in the
future, would be capable of inspiring many
women writers. Those of us who seek the dream
of writing see his work as a reference and we
will see the future with more openness and
possibilities. She will inspire many more works,
she will inspire dreams and we hope for more
adaptations of her wonderful works.
Legacy
Although the birth of the English novel is to be seen
in the first half of the 18th century primarily in the
work of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry
Fielding, it is with Jane Austen that the novel takes
on its distinctively modern character in the realistic
treatment of unremarkable people in the
unremarkable situations of everyday life.
TV and Films Adaptations
The enduring popularity of Austen’s books can be
seen in the numerous film and television adaptions
of her work. These include Ang Lee’s Sense and
Sensibility (1995), which starred Emma Thompson
(who also wrote the Academy Award-winning
screenplay) and Kate Winslet. Pride and Prejudice
was notably adapted into a 1940 movie starring
Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier and a 1995 TV
miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
Other film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice
include Bride & Prejudice (2004), directed by
Gurinder Chadha and starring Aishwarya Rai
Bachchan; a 2005 film featuring Keira Knightley and
Matthew Macfadyen; and Fire Island (2022), starring
Joel Kim Booster. Mansfield Park was covered in a
1983 miniseries, a 1999 film, and a 2007 TV movie.
Treatments of Emma include a 1996 TV movie, a 1996
film starring Gwyneth Paltrow, and a 2020 movie. In
addition, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) was based on
Pride and Prejudice, and Clueless (1995) was
inspired by Emma.
Look into your own heart, because whoever
looks outside dreams, but whoever looks
inside wakes up.
Jane Austen
“Only the deepest love will make me marry,
and that is why I will remain single.”
Elizabeth Bennett. Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Austen
Thank
You
By: Alejandra Ayala
