Who was Jane Austen?
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a parson’s daughter, well-connected with the landed and professional classes, and it was to their world that she confined herself in her novels, writing to a niece that ‘3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on’. Her novels were written in the intervals of a busy family life, the last three (Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion) in the parlour of her mother’s cottage at Chawton, in Hampshire. In a ‘Biographical Notice’ to Northanger Abbey, posthumously published in 1818, her brother Henry wrote that ‘Though in composition she was equally rapid and correct, yet an invincible distrust of her own judgement induced her to withhold her books from the public, till time and many perusals had satisfied her that the charm of recent composition was dissolved’.
AUSTEN, JANE (1775-1817), English novelist, was born on the 16th of December 1775 at the parsonage of Steventon, in Hampshire, a village of which her father, the Rev. George Austen, was rector. She was the seventh of eight children. Her mother was Cassandra Leigh, niece of Theophilus Leigh, a dry humorist, and for fifty years master of Balliol, Oxford. The life of no woman of genius could have been more uneventful than Miss Austen’s. She did not marry, and she never left home except on short visits, chiefly to Bath. Her first sixteen years were spent in the rectory at Steventon, where she began early to trifle with her pen, always jestingly, for family entertainment. In 1801 the Austens moved to Bath, where Mr Austen died in 1805, leaving only Mrs Austen, Jane and her sister Cassandra, to whom she was always deeply attached, to keep up the home; his sons were out in the world, the two in the navy, Francis William and Charles, subsequently rising to admiral’s rank. In 1805 the Austen la
We have only a couple of sketches and letters to tell us about her, but from this slim thread hangs a library’s worth of speculation, including countless Hollywood interpretations of her life and her books. Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury takes you inside the author’s world—the hardships she faced, the loves she lost, and the keen sense of irony that kept her going. Fully illustrated with Regency-era artwork, the book also explains key aspects of life in Austen’s time. This treasury also contains removable reproductions of many important documents, including a handwritten letter from Jane to her sister Cassandra, pages from the rough draft of Persuasion, and a quirky “History of England” written by Jane as a schoolgirl and illustrated by her sister. These special features, combined with the insightful narrative and evocative images, make Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury an intimate and unique experience for anyone who appreciates the timeless significance of her work.
