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Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Background
- Born in the rectory at Steventon, Hampshire, the sixth of seven children of the Reverend
George and Cassandra Leigh Austen.
- Part of a lively, affectionate family who encouraged her as a child to read and write;
began at twelve writing parodies of popular and sentimental fiction. Like the rest
of her family, enjoyed producing and performing in amateur theatricals.
- Her closest lifetime relationship, with her only sister, Cassandra, who edited (and
censored) her letters after her death..
- Little known of the events of her life; never married, though she had several suitors.
- Moved with great unhappiness from Steventon to Bath after her father's retirement
(1801); upon his death in 1806, moved to Southampton and then, in 1809, to Chawton.
- Died at forty-two of what is believed to have been Addison's disease.
Career
- First sustained writings were novels in epistolary form, beginning in 1794 with Lady
Susan.
- Guarded her privacy and deliberately avoided literary circles; all works published
during her lifetime appeared anonymously.
- Her fiction favorably reviewed by Sir Walter Scott, the most popular novelist of the
day.
- The chronology of her writing difficult to establish because she typically rewrote and
reworked earlier materials throughout her career--e.g., Lady Susan eventually
evolved into Northanger Abbey; First Impressions, into Pride and
Prejudice; Elinore and Marianne into Sense and Sensibility. Novels
published in a different order than they were begun or completed.
Major Writings
Juvenilia (written during her teens) (published in three volumes by Oxford
Press)
Love and Friendship (at fourteen)
A History of England (at fifteen)
A Collection of Letters and Lesley Castle (between sixteen and seventeen)
Lady Susan (between eighteen and nineteen)
Elinore and Marianne (written 1795-6)
First Impression (written 1797)
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1816)
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (post. 1818)
Biographical and Critical Information
- Austen online
Republic of Pemberley: A Jane Austen website
Jane Austen -- a Japanese
site with many links.
The Jane Austen Homepage
Ostentatious Jane's Page
Bibliomania Study Guide to Jane
Austen
A Guide to the Jane Austen
Collection
The Jane Austen Society of North America site
The Jane Austen Centre --
in Bath
Pride and Prejudice Paradise (a site
devoted to the film version)
- Selected print resources
A Companion to Jane Austen Studies, ed. by Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin,
2000.
Pride and Prejudice, Third Edition (Norton Critical Editions), ed. Donald Gray,
2000.
Jane Austen: A Life, Claire Tomalin, 1999.
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. by Edward Copeland and Juliet
McMaster, 1997.
Jane Austen's World, Maggie Lane, 1997.
Jane Austen: Her Life, Park Honan, 1986.
Pride and Prejudice: Modern Critical Interpretations, ed. Harold Bloom and
William Golding, 1987.
Approaches to Teaching Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Approaches to Teaching World
Literature, No 45), ed. Marcia McClintock Folsom, 1993.
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Retired Discussion Series
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