A Family of [eight] children will always be called a fine family, where there are head and arms and legs enough for the number.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen was born in 1775 and grew up in the small Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father was the clergyman of the local church, St Nicholas. The household was large with James, Edward, Francis, Henry, Charles, Jane and Cassandra, plus the pupils her father taught to supplement his income. There was also a small farm, to supply the family with meat and vegetables, and maids and manservants to help with the work.
At age seven, Jane went away to school with Cassandra and their cousin Jane to Oxford. The school later moved to Southampton, where all three girls contracted a ‘putrid fever’ and Jane almost died. They then attended the Abbey House School in Reading from the summer of 1785 to the winter of 1786, and were taught writing, spelling, French, drawing, needlework, history, music and dancing.
After this, their education was undertaken privately at home and the children were given unrestricted access to their father’s extensive library of around 500 books. This gave Jane a lifelong love of reading, so she would write whilst Cassandra would paint.
This collection of Jane’s pieces of writing are now called Juvenilia and include dramatic sketches, spoofs and poems. Written to amuse members of her family, including their youngest brother Charles, Cassandra painted portraits in Jane’s sketch books including Mary Queen of Scots, that some speculate is a portrait of Jane.
Jane’s father gave her a travel writing slope for her 19th birthday, and encouraged her writing. This along with visits to London and Kent inspired her to write the first drafts of Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions and Susan, later to be published as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey.
In 1801, when she was 25 years old, Jane’s father announced his retirement and the family moved to Bath. After spending most of her life in rural Hampshire, this was a dramatic change of lifestyle for Jane. Once a stylish spa town, Bath was now past its fashionable best, although Jane enjoyed attending concerts and balls, and visiting the Pump Room, dancing at the Assembly Rooms and watching plays at the Theatre Royal. Over these years, Jane took holidays to Devon and Dorset, where she enjoyed coastal walks and sea bathing which inspired her last novel Sanditon.
In 1805, Jane’s father died suddenly, leaving his wife and two daughters with a much reduced income. They were forced to rent less comfortable lodgings, and the following year moved to Southampton to live with Frank and his new wife Mary. This is when Martha Lloyd, a childhood friend, joined the household after her own parents died.
Jane’s brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a house on his Chawton estate in 1809, which he inherited from the Knights who were wealthy cousins of George Austen. The ladies moved to Chawton in July and formed a comfortable female household, and this is where Jane’s writing flourished.
In 26 July 1809, Jane wrote to her brother Frank away at sea describing her pleasure at a new home and telling him he was a father to a healthy baby boy.
Our Chawton home, how much we find
Already in it, to our mind;
And how convinced, that when complete
It will all other Houses beat
The ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.
You’ll find us very snug next year,
Perhaps with Charles and Fanny near,
For now it often does delight us
To fancy them just over-right us.–
Jane played the piano each morning and wrote at the little table in the window. She and Cassandra often walked to Alton and along the lane to the ‘Great House’ and to attend the family church. Mrs Austen tended the garden, whilst Cassandra and Martha took charge of the smooth running of the household. Life was busy, as nearly everything was homemade, whether it was clothing, a vast patchwork quilt, wine and beer, and even the ink with which Jane wrote her novels.
In the evenings, the women would gather round the fire to read aloud stories and prayers by candlelight, and play parlour games. Jane took out her earlier works and revised them for publication. She redrafted Sense and Sensibility which was published by Egerton in 1811, soon followed by Pride and Prejudice in 1813 which Jane called ‘my own darling child’.
The following year Jane began writing Mansfield Park, also published by Egerton, and in 1814 she began Emma. After some negotiation, it was published in December 1815 by John Murray, the most fashionable publisher of the day and dedicated to the Prince Regent.
In 1815, Jane began writing Persuasion and finished it the following year as Henry succeeded in buying back the manuscript of Northanger Abbey, which was sold in 1803 and never published. It was around this time Jane began to feel unwell, and visited Cheltenham Spa to take the waters. This did not help her, and as she started writing her last novel Sanditon in January 1817, her health worsened.
On 24 May 1817, Jane’s family took her from Chawton to Winchester to be near her doctor at the Winchester Hospital. Dr Lyford could not save her, and at 41 years old, she died in the arms of her sister on 18 July 1817. Her funeral took place on 24 July 1817, and she is buried in the north aisle crypt in Winchester Cathedral.
Six months after her death, Henry arranged to have Northanger Abbey and Persuasion published together as one volume. He wrote a Biographical Notice to preface the novels, naming Jane Austen for the first time as the author of all her published works, and attributing to her ‘A life of usefulness, literature, and religion’.
~~~~~~~~~~
Letter to Frank dated 26 July 1809
My dearest Frank, I wish you joy
Of Mary’s safety with a boy,
Whose birth has given little pain,
Compared with that of Mary Jane.
May he a growing Blessing prove,
And well deserve his Parents Love!
Endow’d with Art’s & Nature’s Good,
Thy name possessing with thy Blood;
In him, in all his ways, may we
Another Francis William see! —
Thy infant days may he inherit,
Thy warmth, nay insolence of spirit; —
We would not with one fault dispense
To weaken the resemblance.
May he revive thy Nursery sin,
Peeping as daringly within,
(His curley Locks but just descried)
With, ‘Bet, my be not come to bide.’
Fearless of danger, braving pain,
And threatened very oft in vain,
Still may one Terror daunt his soul,
One needful engine of controul
Be found in this sublime array,
A neighbouring Donkey’s aweful Bray! —
So may his equal faults as Child
Produce Maturity as mild.
His saucy words & fiery ways
In early Childhood’s pettish days
In Manhood shew his Father’s mind,
Like him considerate & kind;
All Gentleness to those around,
And eager only not to wound.
Then like his Father too, he must,
To his own former struggles just,
Feel his Deserts with honest Glow,
And all his self-improvement know.
A native fault may thus give birth
To the best blessing, conscious worth. —
As for ourselves, we’re very well,
As unaffected prose will tell.
Cassandra’s pen will give our state
The many comforts that await
Our Chawton home — how much we find
Already in it, to our mind,
And how convinced that when complete,
It will all other Houses beat
That ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.
You’ll find us very snug next year;
Perhaps with Charles & Fanny near
For now it often does delight us
To fancy them just over-right us.
