Jane Austen - World's Greatest Classic Books

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Born: December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England

Died: July 18, 1817, in Winchester, England

Jane Austen is considered the best woman author of all time, but her witty, satiric novels about everyday people living ordinary lives were unappreciated until the twentieth century. Her homey realism was a change from the melodramatic fiction being written at the turn of the eighteenth century. Her writing is described as a comedy of manners in middle-class England. A reoccurring theme is that maturity is gained through the loss of illusions.

Austen was the seventh of eight children, and the second daughter in the family. Her father, Reverend George Austen, was a rural clergyman. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen, was known as an excellent storyteller and a charming dinner guest. Two of Austen's brothers followed their father into the church. Two others joined the navy and eventually made the rank of admiral.

Austen received some formal education at schools in Oxford, Reading, and Southampton, but her tutoring ended when she was nine. After this, her Oxford-educated father took on the task of teaching his daughter. Austen learned some Italian, French and history at home. She was well read in Shakespeare and Milton, and the poets, novelists and essayists of the eighteenth century. During the summer, the family entertained friends and neighbors with comic plays they performed on an improvised stage in the barn and moved into the house for the winter. They often conscripted locals for community productions.

Love is the central theme of many of Austen's novels. Because her books deal with the subject in such a deep and sensitive manner, many have speculated on her experience. Known as shy and well-mannered, Austen was courted by a number of suitors, but never married. She accepted a proposal of marriage from a long-standing friend, Harris Bigg-Wither, but ended the engagement the next day when she realized she did not love him. Apparently, the one true love of her life, probably a clergyman or a sailor, ended when he was killed. His name, along with many other facts of her life will forever remain a mystery because her family cut up and censored many of her letters after she died.

Austen lived with her parents all her life. In 1801, after the retirement of her father, the family moved to Bath, along with her sister and closest companion, Cassandra. When George Austen died in 1805, they spent three years in Southampton, before settling in the cottage at Chawton, Hampshire. It was in this house she composed all the final drafts of her works.

Sense and Sensibility, Austen's first book, was published October 31, 1811, twelve years after she first offered it to a publisher. Thomas Egerton agreed to publish it only if Austen agreed to pay the loss. However, the reviews were good and she made �140.

At age thirty-five, she continued to produce a novel a year for the next five. Established, but still unacknowledged as author, Austen published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813. Apparently the Prince Regent, later George the IV, discreetly commanded that Emma, published in 1815, be dedicated to him.

In 1816, her health began to fail. Today, doctors suspect she was suffering from Addison's disease. A few months before her death, she moved to Winchester for medical attention, but she died in the hospital and was buried at Winchester Cathedral. After her death, her authorship was officially announced by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Pride and Prejudice
Austen’s most popular work — the story of the Bennet family.
Mrs. Bennet occupies her time searching for husbands for her five daughters including the book’s intelligent heroine, Elizabeth, who represents “prejudice.” Her suitor, Fitzwilliam Darcy, represents “pride.”

Sense and Sensibility
One of Austen’s most famous works — the story of two sisters, representing sense and sensibility, who are deserted by the young men they expect to marry.

Jane Austen: The Complete Novels
Collected together in one volume, The Complete Novels show the development of Austen as a writer and social commentator. From the early optimism and youthful energy of Northanger Abbey to the quiet and subtle art of Persuasion, this collection reveals the breadth of one of the best loved novelists of all time.

Emma
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin	The author of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and other comedies of manners gets a biography similar in tone to her own books: intelligent but not intellectual, witty without being nasty. Claire Tomalin, author of four previous biographies of notable British women, treats Jane Austen (1775-1817) with the respect her genius deserves. Tomalin eschews gossip and speculation in favor of a sober account of the writer's life that nonetheless sparkles with sly humor. Perceptive analyses of each of Austen's novels, with autobiographical links suggested but never insisted upon, add to the value of Jane Austen: A Life.

Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye	To peruse this lovely volume is to step back in time and experience the world of Georgian and Regency Britain-the world of Jane Austen's enduringly popular fiction. From grand country houses to humble villagers' cottages, from formal dinners to intimate family suppers, from the streets of Bath to the Cobb at Lyme Regis, the author revisits the places familiar to Austen and her characters as she explores in depth the social and physical environment that formed the backdrop for such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. This meticulously detailed account is an essential source of background information for all students and enthusiasts of Jane Austen's books.

Jane Austen's Letters by Deirdre Le Faye	Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist: intimate and gossipy, observant and informative, they bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. R W Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. For this third edition Le Faye has added new material that has come to light since 1952, and reordered the letters into their correct chronological sequence. She has provided new biographical, topographical and general indexes, discreet annotation, and information on watermarks, postmarks and other physical details of the manuscripts. The edition has also been redesigned for ease of reading and reference.

Jane Austen (Penguin Lives) by Carol Shields	It's a perennial source of frustration to Jane Austen's admirers that so little is known about her quiet existence as an unmarried woman seeking an outlet for her ferocious intelligence in genteel, rural England at the turn of the 19th century. Carol Shields, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Stone Diaries, has already proved herself a writer who can convey large truths with an economical amount of material, which makes her an excellent choice as Austen's biographer. Shields's brief but cogent text makes persuasive connections between Austen's novels and her life (the plethora of unsatisfactory mothers, for example, and the obvious sympathy for women barred from marriage by poverty and from careers by social custom), but she never forgets that fiction expresses first and foremost an artist's response to the world around her, not actual personal history. In fact, Shields argues, it may well have been Austen's sense that the novels she loved to read didn't provide a very accurate picture of the society she knew that fired her own work. Her merciless portraits of the economic underpinnings of marriage and family relations are in many ways more "realistic" than male writers' dramas of battle or females' fantasies of romantic bliss. As for her life's lack of incident, its one major disruption--her parents' move to Bath--prompted a nine-year silence from their formerly prolific daughter. Shields gleans as much as she can from Austen's letters, while remembering that they too gave voice to a persona, not the whole truth, in order to delineate a quirky, sometimes cranky, sometimes catty woman who was by no means the perfect maiden lady her surviving relatives sought to immortalize. An Austen biography will never be as much fun as an Austen novel, but Shields does a remarkably entertaining job of discerning the links between the two.

Jane Austen's World: The Life and Times of England's Most Popular Author by Maggie Lane	It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of the most popular authors the English language has ever produced. Her six novels have charmed generations of readers - their wit and romance are unforgettable. This book presents Jane Austen's life and works in a highly illustrated volume for the first time, taking a thematic, all-encompassing look at this most brilliant of authors and the society that shaped her writing. Jane Austen's World covers the historical period Austen inhabited and its influence on her creations. Central to the novels are the courtships that have captured so many imaginations - the relationship between the enchanting Lizzie Bennet and proud Mr. Darcy, the so-nearly tragic liaison of the passionate Marianne Dashwood and the feckless Willoughby, and the gradual awakenings of spoilt, yet well-meaning Emma Woodhouse for the dependable Mr. Knightly. Written in an informative and accessible style, this book will appeal to those who study Austen's work as well as those who have been introduced to her by the highly acclaimed film and television adaptations of her novels.