Biography of Jane Austen

On December 16, 1775 in Stephenson Hampshire, England, Jane Austen was born; the seventh of eight children, but the second daughter, to Cassandra and Reverend George Austen. The order of the children from eldest to youngest was as follows: James, Edward, Henry, Cassandra, Francis, George, Jane, and Charles. Jane’s whole family was also well respected throughout their community, and her father acted as Oxford-educated rector for an Anglican parish. Jane was very close to her father and her older sister, Cassandra. In her pre-adolescent years, Jane and her siblings were well educated as their parents stressed creative thinking and literacy skills. Their parents were strong believers in open, advanced learning. Most of the children’s education was taught by family members, as well as self-taught. All of the children in the household were allowed free access to their father’s enormous, five hundred-book library. Jane and her sister, Cassandra, became two of the few of the best educated young women in their time. Later in life, she and Cassandra were sent off to boarding schools to broaden their education, but due to financial troubles and the two girls contracting typhus, were sent home in 1786. Both girls, although they were weak, pulled through the sickness, which nearly took Jane’s life. During her adolescent years, Jane began to show an interest in writing and she began small writings in her notebooks. During the 1790s, she began crafting small novels and wrote a parody of another author’s romance novel and called it Love and Freindship. The next year, she and Cassandra collaborated on a new parody, The History of England in which Cassandra provided the illustrations and Jane wrote the story. All of Jane’s small writings, poems, and journal entries are now grouped together in what is now called Jane's Juvenilia. Throughout her early adulthood, Jane continued to write, as well as attend her church’s regular services, and care for her family and their house. On December 2, 1802 Jane got engaged to Harris Bigg-Wither. However, she broke off the engagement the next day to continue her work. Occasionally, she would read aloud to her whole family, sometimes from her own novels. When she could, she attended cotillions, which shaped her into a skilled dancer. As she continued to write in her notebooks, she created more novels such as Lady Susan and one of her future famous works, Elinor and Marianne, which would later be published as Sense and Sensibility. Other works that became famous after her death were the drafts First Impressions, which got published as Pride and Prejudice, and Susan, which got published as Northanger Abbey by Henry, her brother after her death on July 18, 1817. In 1801, Jane discovered her father was ill, and moved back in with him, her mother, and Cassandra. After a short while, her father died in 1805 and the three women’s financial status dropped due to his death, and they began moving around England. Finally, in 1809, they found financial stability and