When was austen born

Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. 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. Over the span of her life, Austen would become especially close to her father and older sister, Cassandra. Indeed, she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work.

To acquire a more formal education, Austen and Cassandra were sent to boarding schools during Austen's pre-adolescence. During this time, Austen and her sister caught typhus, with Austen nearly succumbing to the illness. After a short period of formal education cut short by financial constraints, they returned home and lived with the family from that time forward.

Ever fascinated by the world of stories, Austen began to write in bound notebooks. In the s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Freindship [sic], a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing.

The next year she wrote The History of England These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as Austen's Juvenilia. Austen spent much of her early adulthood helping run the family home, playing piano, attending church, and socializing with neighbors.

Her nights and weekends often involved cotillions, and as a result, she became an accomplished dancer. On other evenings, she would choose a novel from the shelf and read it aloud to her family, occasionally one she had written herself. She continued to write, developing her style in more ambitious works such as Lady Susan , another epistolary story about a manipulative woman who uses her sexuality, intelligence and charm to have her way with others.

Only a few of her manuscripts remain in existence and the majority of her correspondence was either burned or heavily edited by her sister, Cassandra, shortly before she died.

As a result, the details that are known about her are rare and inconsistent. What can be surmised through remaining letters and personal acquaintances is that she was a woman of stature, humor and keen intelligence.

Family remembrances of Austen portray her in a kind, almost saintly light, but critics who have studied her books and the remnants of her letters believe she was sharper than her family wished the public to think. Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on December 16, and grew up in a tight-knit family. She was the seventh of eight children, with six brothers and one sister.

Her parents, George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, were married in Her father was an orphan but with the help of a rich uncle he attended school and was ordained by the Church of England. Subsequently, he was elevated enough in social standing to provide Cassandra a worthy match whose family was of a considerably higher social status. In , they moved to Steventon, a village in north Hampshire, about 60 miles southwest of London, where her father was appointed rector.

Of all her brothers, Austen was closest to Henry; he served as her agent, and then after her death, as her biographer. George, the second oldest son, was born mentally deficient and spent the majority of his life in institutions.

Austen and Cassandra were close friends and companions throughout their entire lives. The two youngest Austen boys, Francis and Charles, both served in the Navy as highly decorated admirals. When Austen was 7, she and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to attend school but sometime later the girls came down with typhus and were brought back to Steventon.

When Austen was 9 they attended the Abbey School in Reading. Shortly after enrolling however, the girls were withdrawn, because their father could no longer afford tuition. Though this completed their formal schooling, the girls continued their education at home, with the help of their brothers and father. The Austens often read aloud to one another.

This evolved into short theatrical performances that Austen had a hand in composing. The Austen family plays were performed in their barn and were attended by family members and a few close neighbors. By the age of 12, Austen was writing for herself as well as for her family. She wrote poems and several parodies of the dramatic fiction that was popular at the time, such as History of England and Love and Freindship [sic].

Austen is said to have looked like her brother Henry, with bright hazel eyes and curly hair, over which she always wore a cap. She won the attention of a young Irish gentleman named Tom Lefroy. Neither Austen nor her sister would ever marry. Austen believed that a woman shouldn't get married if she wasn't in love. She once advised her niece Fanny Knight that, "Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection.

Britain was frequently at war during Austen's lifetime and some of her brothers served abroad. Austen rarely referenced war directly, but incorporated it in her writing by describing the vibrant redcoats of military men and the excitement generated when dashing officers arrived in town.

The Austen family was well-connected but not very wealthy. Austen's father was always in debt , worked as a farmer and ran a boys' school in addition to being a rector.

Austen's work is available in approximately 40 languages. Cadell turned it down, sight unseen. Sixteen years later, in , publisher Thomas Egerton had a much different reaction. Having already published Sense and Sensibility , Egerton predicted that Pride and Prejudice would be a bestseller. It was priced at 18 shillings and was an immediate hit. Austen referred to Pride and Prejudice as her own "darling child," in a letter to her sister Cassandra after receiving the first print of the novel.

When Austen's father died in , the family encountered some financial woes. The women spent the next few years moving around, staying at the homes of various family members and other rented homes. In , they found permanent housing inside Austen's brother Edward's cottage in Chawton. Chawton Cottage is where Austen wrote all of her six novels, though she may have written early drafts in other homes.

In , it was opened to the public as Jane Austen's House Museum. As a child, Austen would pastiche 18th century romance novels. It's a genre she satirized in her own book Northanger Abbey , published in December Austen wrote a short play called Sir Charles Grandison.

She worked on it just before finishing Lady Susan , an epistolary novel she finished writing in about Sir Charles Grandison was not published until in , well after death. The novel was made available to the public several years after her death in Austen had written 11 chapters and started a 12th. As Austen's health declined, she created a will and listed her sister Cassandra as her heir. She also mentioned her brother Henry and his late wife's secretary Madame Bigeon.

Austen and Cassandra also moved to Winchester College to be closer to her doctor. Austen died at the age of 41 from a disease that was never diagnosed. Theories about her cause of death have been swirling for years. While the most popular has been Addison's Disease , scholars have also suggested that it was tuberculosis or a form of cancer.

Most recently, the British Library published a blog post indicating that Austen had died from cataracts caused by arsenic poisoning. Austen's final composition was a poem, dictated to her sister Cassandra three days before her death. The poem was a humorous ditty on England's rainy weather. Austen's works have also inspired modern storylines , like the novel and film series Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding, who took inspiration from Pride and Prejudice , and the Alicia Silverstone-led film Clueless , based on Emma.

Goodfellas , Martin Scorsese's film, is said to be a dark adaptation of Mansfield Park. Britain's culture minister put an immediate export ban on the ring, preventing Clarkson from taking it home to the U. Two years later, Clarkson withdrew her ownership.