Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on December, 6th, 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, Rev. George Austen, was a rector.
She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight. The Austens did not lose a single one of their children. Cassandra Leigh, Jane's mother, fed her infants at the breast a few months, and then sent them to a wet nurse in a nearby villageto be looked after for another year or longer.
The first 25 years of her life Jane spent in Hampshire. On her father's unexpected retirement, the family sold off everything, including Jane's piano, and moved to Bath. Jane, aged twenty-five, and Cassandra, her elder sister, aged twenty-eight, were considered by contemporary standards confirmed old maid, and followed their parents. Torn from herfriends and rural roots in Steventon, Austen abandoned her literary career for a decade.
 She started to write for family amusement as a child. Her parents were avid readers; Austen's own favorite poet was Cowper. Her earliest-known writings date from about 1787. 
 Very shy about her writing, she wrote on small pieces of paper that she slipped under the desk plotter if anyone came into theroom.
Rev. George Austen supported his daughter's writing aspirations, bought her paper and a writing desk, and tried to help her get a publisher. After his death in 1805, she lived with her sister and hypochondriac mother in Southampton. In July 1809 they moved to a large cottage in the village of Chawton. This was the place where Austen felt at home. She never married, she never had a room of herown, but her social life was active and she had suitors and romantic dreams.
The cottage in Chawton where Jane Austen lived during the last eight years of her life, now Jane Austen's House Museum

Society and era.

A decade after the North American colonies gained independence, the British Empire in the wake of the French Revolution would enter the Napoleonic Wars, and by 1812 was once againclashing with its former protectorate the United States. During this period of foreign upheaval the domestic English society in which Jane Austen was born into, women were not usually given the educational opportunities offered to men and marriage was the only viable option for economic security and being part of the social norm. Ironically, while most of Austen’s works centered on the businessof providing husbands for daughters, she never married leading to speculation on her sexuality and social graces. 
In the 18th century English society in which Jane Austen lived, the male members of a family were given educational opportunities that were not always afforded to the ladies of the household. Fortunately for Austen, she was born into a family that valued education to both sons anddaughters, and she was encouraged by her family to produce literature.
Jane Austen is now thought of as one of the greatest English authors and considered by many as the first great woman novelist.

Novels

Austen wrote of the provincial life times in which she lived and had sufficient knowledge of the middle class, gentry and aristocracy, and these surroundings became the places andcharacters of her novels. The plots of her works focus on misunderstood feelings, human weakness and social obligations. Her novels are still being republished with most of them gaining present day acceptance and have been made into motion picture and television productions. The characters of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice; Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility,and Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightly of Emma have become the romantic counterparts of today’s “chick flicks” restrictions that were placed on women during the late 18th and early 19th century producing literature that inspires and influences readers today. 

Pride and prejudice:
Jane Austen began her second novel, Pride and Prejudice, before she was twenty-one. It was originally titled First...