How old was Jane Austen when she died?
Hi, Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England (near Basingstoke). She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827 (née Leigh). (See the silhouettes of Jane Austen’s father and mother, apparently taken at different ages.) He had a fairly respectable income of about £600 a year, supplemented by tutoring pupils who came to live with him, but was by no means rich (especially with eight children), and (like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) couldn’t have given his daughters much to marry on. More than one reader has wondered whether the childhood of the character Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey might not reflect her own childhood, at least in part — Catherine enjoys “rolling down the green slope at the back of the house” and prefers cricket and baseball to girls’ play. In 1783, Ja
