Jane Austen

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. "Jane Austen." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 23 Mar. 2025. Web. 3 Apr. 2025.

Jane Austen lived at Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was rector, for the first twenty-five years of her life. When Reverend George Austen retired, he moved the family to Bath. After his death in 1805, the Austen females found themselves in reduced circumstances and were without a settled home again until 1809, when they were given the use of the cottage at Chawton by Jane’s wealthy brother, Edward Austen Knight.  

Jane began feeling unwell around February of 1816 -- remaining undiagnosed over the next year and a half, with symptoms improving or worsening, off and on. Despite the efforts of her physician, Mr. Lyford and her sister (or sister-in-law) Mary Lloyd Austen, who assisted with the nursing, Jane died in Winchester on July 18^th,1817, at the age of 41. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral – not Abbey - in Hampshire, UK.  Hansen, Micah D. and Winslow, Shannon. "Author's Notes." The Persuasion of Miss Jane Austen – a Novel. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014. 262–263.

Unfortunately, hard facts and specifics about her are in limited supply. She didn't leave a diary behind, and she didn't achieve enough fame in her own lifetime for biographers to begin taking notes. We do not even have an accurate image of what she looked like!

Much of the pieced-together information about Austen's life comes to us via family remembrances and through the surviving letters she wrote herself, particularly those back and forth with her sister, Cassandra, who filtered what we know – and what we do not know -- about her sister!

Park Honan

Claire Tomalin

Sense and Sensibility: authoritative text, contexts, criticism by Jane Austen; Claudia L. Johnson (editor)

Call Number: PR 4034 .S4 2002

ISBN: 9780393977516

Publication Date: 1811 [this edition: 2001]

*A novel about the Dashwood sisters, Elinor & Marianne, whose life circumstances drastically change after their father's death. They are forced to fend for themselves to find suitable marriage prospects. This is accomplished through a series of misunderstandings which unravel as they make the acquaintances of three very different men. MAIN THEMES: Common Sense, Power, Class and Self-Control.

Mansfield Park: authoritative text, contexts, criticism by Jane Austen; Claudia L. Johnson (editor)

Call Number: PR4031 .M3 1998

ISBN: 9780393967913

Publication Date: 1814 [this edition:1998]

*A novel about a poor girl who grows up living with her wealthy cousins, where she learns the mores of Victorian society. Ensnared in several love triangles, she is subjected to the underhanded dealings -- bordering on duplicity -- of some among the Landed Gentry. MAIN THEMES: Class, Status, Wealth, Love, Dignity, Honor, Selfishness, Obligation, and Pride.

Emma by Jane Austen; Adela Pinch (Introduction by); James S. Kingsley (Editor)

Call Number: PR 4034 .E5 2003

ISBN: 9780192802378

Publication Date: 1815 [this edition: 2003]

*A novel about 21-year-old Emma Woodhouse as she searches to find suitable and upstanding matches for her friends -- and ends up finding herself. MAIN THEMES: Society, Class, Irony, Intelligence, Marriage and Indifference

Persuasion: authoritative text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism by Jane Austen; Patricia Meyer Spacks (Editor)

Call Number: PR 4034 .P4 1995

ISBN: 9780393960181

Publication Date: posthumously:1817 (with Northanger Abbey) [this edition:1994]

*A novel about Anne Elliot raised by her self-absorbed father, Sir Walter, and a surrogate-mother, Lady Russell, who dissuaded her from a potential union, eight years earlier when she was nineteen, with Captain Fredrick Wentworth. He has returned, now a self -made man -- after the Napoleonic Wars -- hoping to reclaim her heart. MAIN THEMES: Perseverance, Wealth, Peerage and Marriage.

Sense and Sensibility: authoritative text, contexts, criticism by Jane Austen; Claudia L. Johnson (editor)

Call Number: PR 4034 .S4 2002

ISBN: 9780393977516

Publication Date: 1811 [this edition: 2001]

*A novel about the Dashwood sisters, Elinor & Marianne, whose life circumstances drastically change after their father's death. They are forced to fend for themselves to find suitable marriage prospects. This is accomplished through a series of misunderstandings which unravel as they make the acquaintances of three very different men. MAIN THEMES: Common Sense, Power, Class and Self-Control.