Tragically, the one thing most people know about Jane Austen is that she died before her time.
But there is so much more to know about this woman! How was her life? Her family? Did she ever fall in love herself? When did she start writing? Much is known - much is not. And much, much more i speculated and theorized.
Austen is one of my absolute favourite authors. I can always go back to her stories and feel at home in her world. And whenever a movie or series adaptation comes out, you can be sure I am going to watch it!
In this article I have collected a couple of facts about this amazing writer, that you might not know. At the end of the article I have also included a bibliography, so you can learn even more.
1. Jane's books were published anonymously
During her lifetime, Jane published her books anonymously. Her first book was simply published under the name of 'A Lady'. Her next novel, Pride and Prejudice, was attributed to 'The writer of Sense and Sensibility'. It was only after her death that her name was put on her books and this was due to the insistence of her brother, Henry.
2. She had six brothers and one sister
Of the eight siblings, Jane was the second youngest and the second girl. For years scholars didn't know that Jane had six brothers and not just five. Her second oldest brother, George, was hardly ever referenced, probably because he suffered from epilepsy and might also have been deaf and dumb as well as intellectually challenged. For this reason George lived with other relatives and therefore probably didn't have much to do with his siblings. Jane's only sister, Cassandra (named after their mother) was Jane's best friend. Her favourite brother was possibly Henry, the fourth brother, who also served as her literary agent.
3. She was engaged but never married
For less than 24 hours Jane Austen was actually engaged to be married. In December 1802, just shy of her 27th birthday, Jane accepted a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the brother of her two friends Alethea and Catherine. Jane probably accepted because a marriage to Harris would have been advantageous to her and her family, but after having slept on it, she broke off the engagement the next morning.
4. She finished six novels
During her life, Jane wrote both novels, poems, plays and satires. However, she only actually finished six of her novels, which have all been published. Of these, four of them where published during her lifetime - Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). Jane died in 1817. Her remaining two books, Northanger Abbey (1817) and Persuasion (1818) where published posthumously.
5. After her death her nephew wrote a memoir about her
The very first biography of Jane was written by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh. He was the son of Jane's oldest brother James. The memoir was published in 1869. While James Edward was the one who wrote it, the work draws on the memories of several family members. This remained the primary biographical work on Jane for more than half a century.
6. The cause of her death is unknown
In July 1817, at the age of 41, Jane Austen died. She had been ill for several months, but the true nature of her illness is actually still unknown. Still, several theories exist. The perhaps most famous and accepted is that she suffered from Addison's disease. The symptoms include abdominal pains, weakness and weight loss. Austen herself called her ailment rheumatism. More recently, in 2017, Sandra Tuppen from the British Library posed that Austen might have died from lead poisoning. Lead was common in many Regency household items, which led to many accidental poisonings and deaths, possibly also Austen's.
7. Jane started writing when she was 12 and her early works are referred to as Juvenilia
At age 12 Austen started writing poetry, short stories, dramatic sketches and moral fragments. Her Juvenilia contains all her works up until her novels. These stories and poems have been found in Jane's three surviving notebooks aptly entitled Volume the First, Volume the Second and Volume the Third. The first volume is dated 1786/1787 when Jane was 11 or 12 and the last is dated 1793 when Jane was 17.
8. It is believed that her cousin Eliza was the inspiration for Mary Crawford
Eliza Hancock was both the cousin and sister-in-law of Jane. She was the daughter of Philadelphia Austen, the sister of Jane Austen's father, George. Eliza flirted with two of Jane's brothers, just like Mary Crawford did with Edmund and Tom in Mansfield Park. Furthermore, Eliza had a love of acting, which is also true for Mary Crawford. Eventually, Eliza married Jane's favourite brother, Henry. Furthermore, Jane actually also dedicated one of her Juvenilia works, Love and Friendship, to Eliza.
Some scholars also believe that Eliza may have served as the inspiration for Elizabeth Bennet.
9. Her characters lived beyond their books in her imagination
In his memoir, Jane's nephew describes how Jane would often tell her family tidbits about the lives of her characters after their stories ended. For example, after the ending of Pride and Prejudice, Kitty and Mary Bennet both got married, Kitty to a clergyman near Pemberly and Mary to a clerk who worked for her uncle Philips.
10. Austen sometimes referred to her works as her children
In a letter to her sister Cassandra, Jane referred to Pride and Prejudice as her "own darling child". In another letter, also to her sister, she wrote of Sense and Sensibility that "I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child."
11. After the death of her father, Jane stopped writing for a while
In 1805 George Austen, Jane's father, died. George had been a rector and big influence in Jane's life. It was he, who further educated Jane after she ended her formal education at boarding school in Reading. When he died Jane, her sister and their mother fell on hard times. They had to leave their home several times and were pretty much passed from brother to brother until, finally, in 1809, her brother Edward offered them a permanent home in Chawton village. The Chawton years then went on to become Jane's most productive years. She stayed in Chawton until her death in 1817.
12. She used straight pins to edit her manuscripts
Before the time of typewriters and computers editing was a painstaking process. Jane used the 17th century method of straight pinning. On separate notes, Jane would write her edits and then, using straight pins, she would pin the notes to the places in her manuscript, where the edit would go.
13. Jane brewed her own beer and enjoyed making mead
Like many other Regency-era women, Jane delighted in brewing her own beer and making her own mead. In this time, beer was the preferred drink, as water was unsafe and fraught with health dangers. She preferred spruce beer, which gives off citrus and pine flavors. This beer can be described as a cousin of root beer. It contained both hops and molasses. Her beer recipe is lost to us, but we can still make her mead.
14. Emma was dedicated to the Prince Regent even though Jane hated him
"That Poor woman [Princess Caroline, wife of the Prince Regent], I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband." Jane wrote this in a letter to her friend Martha Loyd in 1813. Still, in 1815, when Emma was released it featured a dedication to the Prince Regent. The Prince was a great fan of Jane and might actually have been one of the first people to buy her first book, Sense and Sensibility. And he even paid full price for it!
15. Her gravestone doesn't mention that she is a writer
When Jane died in 1817, her family didn't include her vocation on her gravestone. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Her funeral was modest and only attended by four people. She lies under the floor of the north aisle of the nave. The simple gravestone extols her virtues and stoicism but makes no mention of her writing. This omission was rectified in 1870 with a brass plaque written by her biographer and nephew, James Edward. This plaque starts with the words "Jane Austen, known to many by her writings..."
16. None of her books feature a kiss between lovers
While Jane is remembered as one of the greatest romance writers of all time, none of her books actually feature a (described) kiss between lovers. There are plenty of kisses between family members and even a few between friends, but none are on the lips. The closest we ever get to a kiss between two lovers, is when Willoughby kisses Marianne's lock of hair in Sense and Sensibility. Recently, however, it has been theorized that a passionate kiss between lovers did actually happen in Emma. In one scene, Emma enters a room where Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax have been alone for an unspecified amount of time. When Emma enters the room, Frank is fixing a pair of glasses and Jane is staring at a piano. Austen expert John Mullan believe that the two, who were secretly engaged at this time, had been locked in a passionate embrace until Emma disturbed them. Interesting indeed.
17. Jane herself was an avid reader
We know that Jane herself liked to read - and that she had a clear opinion of what was worthy of being read. Some of the leading genres of her time, Gothic novels and sentimental novels, took a hit from Jane's satire pen in Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. She also enjoyed reading other great satirical writers such as Henry Fielding and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Other favourites of hers included the epistolary writer and printer Samuel Richardson, the poet William Cowper, the Scottish novelist Mary Brunton and possibly also the father of historical fiction, Walter Scott.
18. Jane might have had two passionate love affairs
If you've watched the 2007 film Becoming Jane featuring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy, you've certainly heard the name Tom Lefroy (McAvoy's character). Tom was a lawyer and later judge and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He met Jane through his relative, Anne Lefroy, whom Jane was friends with. In a letter to her sister, Jane wrote of Tom, "He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you." The courtship between Tom and Jane ended quickly, if it could ever actually be termed a courtship.
But Lefroy was not Jane's only romantic interest. At a later time, Jane reportedly fell in love with an unknown clergyman, whom she was sure would make her an offer and whom her sister later said was worthy of her love. Sadly, the man died mysteriously before the two could get each other.
19. On March 18 1817 Jane stopped writing
During the last year of her life, Jane was working a novel, that would later be called Sanditon. She finished 11 chapters of the novel, which she called The Brothers. On the last page she added a note that said, that she had stopped writing on March 18 1817. She probably stopped writing due to the illness that would ultimately kill her. She still wrote poems to her family, often dictating them to her sister, but this day was the last she worked on one of her novels. The fragment Sanditon was published in 1925 and has been the object of many attempts at finishing it by various authors.
20. After her death, her sister destroyed many of Jane's letters
Before her own death Cassandra Austen burned the greater part of Jane's letters to her. The reasoning behind this course of action is debated, but most agree that it was probably to preserve Jane's legacy and control the narrative of her life and thoughts. Whether Jane had instructed Cassandra (and possibly other family members) to do this, is contested. Because we have so few letters to provide insights into Jane's own thoughts, scholars often come to very different conclusions about her motives.
21. Austen was (probably) against slavery
Not many of Jane's novels allude to slavery, but a passage in Mansfield Park where Fanny questions her uncle about the state of slavery in Antigua, have led many scholars to believe that Jane was taking a jab at slavery as an institution.
22. When her father tried to have First Impressions published it was rejected
Jane started writing First Impressions in October 1796 during a visit at her brother Edward's estate in Kent. She finished it in August 1797 - this was her first finished novel. In 1797 Jane's father, George, sent the manuscript along with a heartfelt letter to the publisher Thomas Cadell. Cadell rejected the manuscript without even reading it. After her move to Chawton, Jane revisited First Impressions and rewrote it as Pride and Prejudice, which was finally published in 1813.
23. Only two portraits of Jane exists and they were both made by her sister
We only have very little to go on if we want to imagine what Jane Austen looked like. Only two authenticated portraits of her exists. They were both made by her sister, Cassandra. One shows Jane from behind, her face hidden by her bonnet. So that doesn't help us all that much. The other is a water colour portrait that was never finished, therefore half of the illustration is still only a sketch. This small portrait is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Another likeness might exist in the so-called Rice Portrait, but this is widely debated. The owners of this portrait claim that it was painted by the artist Ozias Humphry and depicts a 13-year old Jane Austen. In 2019 the owners revealed a letter supposedly written by Jane's great-niece Fanny Caroline Lefroy, which describes the history of the portrait. The National Portrait Gallery has been offered the painting but declined to buy it, denying it to be a painting of Jane Austen.
Bibliography
- Auerbach, Emily, Searching for Jane Austen (2004)
- Austen-Leigh, James Edward, A Memoir of Jane Austen (1896)
- Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (1997)
- Honan, Park, Jane Austen: Her Life (1987)
- Irvine, Robert P., Jane Austen (2005)
- Le Faye, Deirdre (ed.), Jane Austen's Letters (1932)
- Looser, Devoney, The Making of Jane Austen (2017)
- Todd, Janet, Jane Austen in Context (2005)