Pride and Prejudice (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Born in England on December 16, 1775, Jane Austen is widely admired for her novels about manners in eighteenth-century England. Austen's life is imbedded in the same social world as her characters — that of the "landed gentry" in England's countryside. Her father, George Austen, was a country clergyman in Steventon, Hampshire, who had advanced himself through ambition and intelligence. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was of much higher birth; one of her ancestors had been Lord Mayor of London under Queen Elizabeth I. "The Austen children," writes Laura Dabundo in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, "grew up in a close-knit family, low on financial resources but strong on education and religious principles." Two of her brothers, James and Henry, found careers in the Church of England, while two others, Francis and Charles, entered the Royal Navy and both eventually achieved the rank of admiral. Her brother Edward was adopted by a distant relative, the wealthy but childless Thomas Knight.

Because money was in such short supply, Austen and her older sister Cassandra "had little formal schooling," Dabundo continues. "The significant scholastic experiences that nurtured one of England's leading writers took place in the rectory at Steventon." Jane improved her own mind and prepared herself for a career as an author by reading widely the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, and many others. By 1787, she had already begun to compose her own stories, dramas, and short novels, and in 1795 she began the first drafts of "Elinor and Marianne," which would later become Sense and Sensibility. However, Austen would be thirty-five years old before she ever saw her first book in print. "Pride and Prejudice," writes Dabundo, "had its origins in an epistolary novel, 'First Impressions,' written between October 1796 and August 1797 and offered to a publisher by Mr. Austen in November." Eventually, Pride and Prejudice would be published anonymously in London on January 28, 1813.

Reverend George Austen retired from his rectory in December of 1800, and in May of 1801 he moved his family to the Regency resort town of Bath in the west of England. They remained there until Reverend Austen's sudden death in January of 1805. His death left his wife and daughters without a means of support, and they were forced to rely on the charity of the Austen sons. From 1806 to 1809 the two Cassandras and Jane lived with Frank Austen in Southampton. In the summer of 1809 they settled into Chawton, a country house in Hampshire on the estate of Edward Austen — the brother adopted by wealthy Thomas Knight. There Jane resumed writing and began to revise her earlier manuscripts in hopes of publishing them. On January 28, 1813, Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously in London.

The relative success of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice led Austen to continue to write. Mansfield Park and Emma were published during her lifetime, but Northanger Abbey and Persuasion only appeared after her death. Sometime around the end of 1815 or the beginning of 1816, she began suffering from back pain, fatigue, and nausea. "It has been speculated," declares Dabundo, "that Jane Austen had Addison's disease, destruction of the adrenal glands by tuberculosis or by tumor but it is also possible that she had cancer or tuberculosis unrelated to Addison's disease." She had been working up to the time of her death on a final novel, Sanditon, but it remained unfinished on the day she died, July 18, 1817. "She was buried in Winchester Cathedral," Dabundo concludes. "Obituaries identified her for the first time as 'Authoress of Emma, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.'"