JANE AUSTEN'S BIRTH

  The seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen, Jane Austen was born on December 16th 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England.

  The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking.

JANE AUSTEN'FAMILY

Cassandra Austen

When Austen was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. The children also authored and put on plays and charades. Austen's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. 

Jane Austen's closest companion throughout her life was her elder 

sister, Cassandra. Indeed,

she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work.

JANE AUSTEN'S EDUCATION 

  In 1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs Ann Cawley who took them to Southampton later that the year. That autumn both girls were sent home after catching typhus.  

  She was from then home educated, until she attended boarding school with her sister from early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School , ruled by Mrs La Tournelle. The sisters returned home before December 1786 because the school fees for the two girls were too high for the Austen family. They returned home and lived with the family from that time forward.

  Her education came from reading, guided by her father and brothers James and Henry.

SOME FACTS ABOUT HER LIFE

  From at least aged eleven, Austen wrote poems and stories to amuse herself and her family. 

  In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Friendship.

  In her 30s, Austen started to anonymously publish her works.

  Austen was a voracious reader. She was a fan of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson's moral essays. She read French romances and Gothic novels.

  Austen's final composition was a poem, dictated to her sister Cassandra three days before her death.

Jane Austen's Writing Style

Jane Austen's (1775–1817) distinctive literary style is based on a combination of parody, sarcasm, irony, free indirect speech, and a degree of realism. She uses parody and burlesque for comic effect and to criticize the portrayal of women in 18th century sentimental and Gothic novels.

Jane Austen's Contribution to Literature

In her six major novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) Austen unleashed the possibilities of indigenous literature by creating a comedy of manners of middle-class life in England of her time.

JANE AUSTEN'S DEATH

  In 1816, at the age of 41, Austen started to become ill from a disease that was never diagnosed. While some people say it was Addison's Disease, scholars have also suggested that it was tuberculosis or a form of cancer. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.

  Her last recorded words, the day before her death, were “God grant me patience, Pray for me Oh Pray for me.”

Watercolour of Jane Austen by her sister, Cassandra, 1804.

        Jane Austen can be seen using mostly parody, realism and irony in her novels.
She uses parody as to give the novel a comic effect and critisize the portrayal of women in Gothic novels. She uses irony a lot. She can be often seen creating and using an ironic tone through the narrator and her characters. Austen's novels also ends with a sweet and a happy ending. She doesn't seem to give her novels a bitter, sad ending. 

Her Novels' General Features

The book tells the story of a family and the daughters, Elinor and Marianne, who have personality traits of common sense and sensitivity (sensuality). Austen began writing this book in 1795, and the book was originally called Elinor and Marianne. Then she revised it in 1809. It was her first published novel and she was paying for it to be published. Sense and Sensibility was a success after the release of the book and adapted for film, stage and .

         SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28, 1813, and was later adapted into a film. Pride and prejudice is about a poor family(Bennets) which lives in longbourn, a small English village. The bennet family has five single daughters, and Mrs. Bennet wants her daughters to have a good marriage. Mrs. Bennet's plan begins to come true when Mr. Bingley, a wealthy and polite gentleman, rents a house in the same neighbourhood.

               PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

MANSFİELD PARK

Mansfield Park is the third published novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen's lifetime. The novel did not receive any public reviews until 1821.

The novel tells the story of Fanny Price, starting when her overburdened family sends her at the age of ten to live in the household of her wealthy aunt and uncle and following her development into early adulthood. From early on critical interpretation has been diverse, differing particularly over the character of the heroine, Austen's views about theatrical performance and the centrality or otherwise of ordination and religion, and on the question of slavery. Some of these problems have been highlighted in the several later adaptations of the story for stage and screen.