brief biography of jane austen

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What did Jane Austen accomplish?

What was jane austen’s family like, what did jane austen write.

Jane Austen

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English novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) wrote about unremarkable people in unremarkable situations of everyday life, and yet she shaped such material into remarkable works of art. The economy, precision, and wit of her prose style; the shrewd, amused sympathy expressed toward her characters; and the skillfulness of her characterization and storytelling continue to enchant readers.

Jane Austen was the seventh of eight children. Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children, and their mother was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.

Jane Austen is known for six novels : Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (both 1817). In them, she created vivid fictional worlds, drawing much of her material from the circumscribed world of English country gentlefolk that she knew.

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Jane Austen (born December 16, 1775, Steventon, Hampshire, England—died July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire) was an English writer who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). In these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published together posthumously, 1817), she vividly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century. Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners , but they also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular successes for over two centuries after her death. These works reflect her enduring legacy .

Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight—six boys and two girls. Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His wife, Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.

Jane Austen’s lively and affectionate family circle provided a stimulating context for her writing. Moreover, her experience was carried far beyond Steventon rectory by an extensive network of relationships by blood and friendship. It was this world—of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the neighborhood, and the country town, with occasional visits to Bath and to London —that she was to use in the settings, characters, and subject matter of her novels.

Her earliest known writings date from about 1787, and between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material that has survived in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the First , Volume the Second , and Volume the Third . These contain plays, verses, short novels, and other prose and show Austen engaged in the parody of existing literary forms, notably the genres of the sentimental novel and sentimental comedy . Her passage to a more serious view of life from the exuberant high spirits and extravagances of her earliest writings is evident in Lady Susan , a short epistolary novel written about 1793–94 (and not published until 1871). This portrait of a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction is, in effect, a study of frustration and of woman’s fate in a society that has no use for her talents.

In 1802 it seems likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family, but the next morning changed her mind. There are also a number of mutually contradictory stories connecting her with someone with whom she fell in love but who died very soon after. Since Austen’s novels are so deeply concerned with love and marriage, there is some point in attempting to establish the facts of these relationships. Unfortunately, the evidence is unsatisfactory and incomplete. Cassandra was a jealous guardian of her sister’s private life, and after Jane’s death she censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others. But Jane Austen’s own novels provide indisputable evidence that their author understood the experience of love and of love disappointed.

The earliest of her novels published during her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility , was begun about 1795 as a novel-in-letters called “Elinor and Marianne,” after its heroines. Between October 1796 and August 1797 Austen completed the first version of Pride and Prejudice , then called “First Impressions.” In 1797 her father wrote to offer it to a London publisher for publication, but the offer was declined. Northanger Abbey , the last of the early novels, was written about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title “Susan.” In 1803 the manuscript of “Susan” was sold to the publisher Richard Crosby for £10. He took it for immediate publication, but, although it was advertised, unaccountably it never appeared.

Up to this time the tenor of life at Steventon rectory had been propitious for Jane Austen’s growth as a novelist. This stable environment ended in 1801, however, when George Austen, then age 70, retired to Bath with his wife and daughters. For eight years Jane had to put up with a succession of temporary lodgings or visits to relatives, in Bath, London, Clifton, Warwickshire , and, finally, Southampton , where the three women lived from 1805 to 1809. In 1804 Jane began The Watsons but soon abandoned it. In 1804 her dearest friend, Mrs. Anne Lefroy, died suddenly, and in January 1805 her father died in Bath.

Eventually, in 1809, Jane’s brother Edward was able to provide his mother and sisters with a large cottage in the village of Chawton, within his Hampshire estate, not far from Steventon. The prospect of settling at Chawton had already given Jane Austen a renewed sense of purpose, and she began to prepare Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for publication. She was encouraged by her brother Henry, who acted as go-between with her publishers. She was probably also prompted by her need for money. Two years later Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility , which came out, anonymously, in November 1811. Both of the leading reviews, the Critical Review and the Quarterly Review , welcomed its blend of instruction and amusement.

Meanwhile, in 1811 Austen had begun Mansfield Park , which was finished in 1813 and published in 1814. By then she was an established (though anonymous) author; Egerton had published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, and later that year there were second editions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility . Pride and Prejudice seems to have been the fashionable novel of its season. Between January 1814 and March 1815 she wrote Emma , which appeared in December 1815. In 1816 there was a second edition of Mansfield Park , published, like Emma , by Lord Byron’s publisher, John Murray . Persuasion (written August 1815–August 1816) was published posthumously, with Northanger Abbey, in December 1817.

The years after 1811 seem to have been the most rewarding of her life. She had the satisfaction of seeing her work in print and well reviewed and of knowing that the novels were widely read. They were so much enjoyed by the prince regent (later George IV ) that he had a set in each of his residences, and Emma , at a discreet royal command, was “respectfully dedicated” to him. The reviewers praised the novels for their morality and entertainment, admired the character drawing, and welcomed the domestic realism as a refreshing change from the romantic melodrama then in vogue.

For the last 18 months of her life, Austen was busy writing. Early in 1816, at the onset of her fatal illness, she set down the burlesque Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various Quarters (first published in 1871). Until August 1816 she was occupied with Persuasion , and she looked again at the manuscript of “Susan” ( Northanger Abbey ).

In January 1817 she began Sanditon , a robust and self-mocking satire on health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained unfinished because of Austen’s declining health. She supposed that she was suffering from bile , but the symptoms make possible a modern clinical assessment that she was suffering from Addison disease . Her condition fluctuated, but in April she made her will, and in May she was taken to Winchester to be under the care of an expert surgeon. She died on July 18, and six days later she was buried in Winchester Cathedral .

Her authorship was announced to the world at large by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion . There was no recognition at the time that regency England had lost its keenest observer and sharpest analyst; no understanding that a miniaturist (as she maintained that she was and as she was then seen), a “merely domestic” novelist, could be seriously concerned with the nature of society and the quality of its culture; no grasp of Jane Austen as a historian of the emergence of regency society into the modern world. During her lifetime there had been a solitary response in any way adequate to the nature of her achievement: Sir Walter Scott ’s review of Emma in the Quarterly Review for March 1816, where he hailed this “nameless author” as a masterful exponent of “the modern novel” in the new realist tradition. After her death, there was for long only one significant essay, the review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in the Quarterly for January 1821 by the theologian Richard Whately . Together, Scott’s and Whately’s essays provided the foundation for serious criticism of Jane Austen: their insights were appropriated by critics throughout the 19th century.

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Jane Austen: A brief biography

Jane Austen was born at the Rectory in Steventon , a village in north-east Hampshire, on 16th December 1775.

She was the seventh child and second daughter of the rector, the Revd George Austen, and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh). Of her brothers, two were clergymen, one inherited rich estates in Kent and Hampshire from a distant cousin and the two youngest became Admirals in the Royal Navy; her only sister, like Jane herself, never married.

Steventon Rectory was Jane Austen’s home for the first 25 years of her life. From here she travelled to Kent to stay with her brother Edward in his mansion at Godmersham Park near Canterbury, and she also had some shorter holidays in Bath , where her aunt and uncle lived. During the 1790s she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey; her trips to Kent and Bath gave her the local colour for the settings of these last two books.

In 1801 the Revd George Austen retired, and he and his wife, with their two daughters Jane and Cassandra, left Steventon and settled in Bath.

The Austens rented No. 4 Sydney Place from 1801-1804, and then stayed for a few months at No. 3 Green Park Buildings East, where Mr. Austen died in 1805. While the Austens were based in Bath, they went on holidays to seaside resorts in the West Country, including Lyme Regis in Dorset – this gave Jane the background for Persuasion.

Jane fell ill in 1816 – possibly with Addison’s Disease – and in the summer of 1817 her family took her to Winchester for medical treatment. However, the doctor could do nothing for her, and she died peacefully on 18th July 1817 at their lodgings in No. 8 College Street. She was buried a few days later in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Jane’s novels reflect the world of the English country gentry of the period, as she herself had experienced it. Due to the timeless appeal of her amusing plots, and the wit and irony of her style, her works have never been out of print since they were first published, and are frequently adapted for stage, screen and television. Jane Austen is now one of the best-known and best-loved authors in the English-speaking world.

Profile of Jane Austen

Novelist of the Romantic Period

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Known for: popular novels of the Romantic period

Dates: December 16, 1775 - July 18, 1817

About Jane Austen

Jane Austen's father, George Austen, was an Anglican clergyman, and raised his family in his parsonage. Like his wife, Cassandra Leigh Austen, he was descended from landed gentry that had become involved in manufacturing with the coming of the Industrial Revolution . George Austen supplemented his income as a rector with farming and with tutoring boys who boarded with the family. The family was associated with the Tories and maintained a sympathy for the Stuart succession rather than the Hanoverian.

Jane was sent for the first year or so of her life to stay with her wetnurse. Jane was close to her sister Cassandra, and letters to Cassandra that survive have helped later generations understand the life and work of Jane Austen.

As was usual for girls at the time, Jane Austen was educated primarily at home; her brothers, other than George, were educated at Oxford. Jane was well-read; her father had a large library of books including novels. From 1782 to 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra studied at the home of their aunt, Ann Cawley, returning after a bout with typhus, of which Jane nearly died. In 1784, the sisters were at a boarding school in Reading, but the expense was too great and the girls returned home in 1786.

Jane Austen began writing , about 1787, circulating her stories mainly to family and friends. On George Austen's retirement in 1800, he moved the family to Bath, a fashionable social retreat. Jane found the environment was not conducive to her writing, and wrote little for some years, though she sold her first novel while living there. The publisher held it from publication until after her death.

Marriage Possibilities

Jane Austen never married. Her sister, Cassandra, was engaged for a time to Thomas Fowle, who died in the West Indies and left her with a small inheritance. Jane Austen had several young men court her. One was Thomas Lefroy whose family opposed the match, another a young clergyman who suddenly died. Jane accepted the proposal of the wealthy Harris Bigg-Wither, but then withdrew her acceptance to the embarrassment of both parties and their families.

When George Austen died in 1805, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved first to the home of Jane's brother Francis, who was frequently away. Their brother, Edward, had been adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin; when Edward's wife died, he provided a home for Jane and Cassandra and their mother on his estate. It was at this home in Chawton where Jane resumed her writing. Henry, a failed banker who had become a clergyman like his father, served as Jane's literary agent.

Jane Austen died, probably of Addison's disease, in 1817. Her sister, Cassandra, nursed her during her illness. Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Novels Published

Jane Austen's novels were first published anonymously; her name does not appear as author until after her death. Sense and Sensibility was written "By a Lady," and posthumous publications of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were credited simply to the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park . Her obituaries disclosed that she had written the books, as does her brother Henry's "Biographical Notice" in editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .

Juvenilia were published posthumously.

• Northanger Abbey  - sold 1803, not published until 1819
• Sense and Sensibility  - published 1811 but Austen had to pay the printing costs
• Pride and Prejudice  - 1812
• Mansfield Park  - 1814
• Emma  - 1815
• Persuasion  - 1819
• Father: George Austen, Anglican clergyman, died 1805
• Mother: Cassandra Leigh
• James, also a Church of England clergyman
• George, institutionalized, disability uncertain: may have been mental retardation, may have been deafness
• Henry, banker then Anglican clergyman, served as Jane's agent with her publishers
• Francis and Charles, fought in the Napoleonic wars, became admirals
• Edward, adopted as heir by a wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight
• older sister Cassandra (1773 - 1845) who also never married
• Aunt: Ann Cawley; Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra studied at her home 1782-3
• Aunt: Jane Leigh Perrot, who hosted the family for a time after George Austen retired
• Cousin: Eliza, Comtesse of Feuillide, whose husband was guillotined during the Reign of Terror in France, and who later married Henry

Selected Quotations

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

"The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome."

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."

"If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it."

"What strange creatures brothers are!"

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be kindly spoken of."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to Yes, she ought to say No, directly."

"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage."

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

"Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments."

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering."

"Those who do not complain are never pitied."

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"

"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."

"It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble."

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

"...as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"...the soul is of no sect, no party: it is, as you say, our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious and political distinctions."

"You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."

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Biography Online

Jane Austen Biography

Early Life of Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on 16th December 1775. She was the seventh daughter of an eight child family. Her father, George Austen, was a vicar and lived on a reasonable income of £600 a year. However, although they were middle class, they were not rich; her father would have been unable to give much to help her daughters get married. Jane was brought up with her five brothers and her elder sister Cassandra. (another brother, Edward, was adopted by a rich, childless couple and went to live with them). Jane was close to her siblings, especially Cassandra, to whom she was devoted. The two sisters shared a long correspondence throughout her life; much of what we know about Jane comes from these letters, although, unfortunately, Cassandra burnt a number of these on Jane’s death.

Jane was educated at Oxford and later a boarding school in Reading. In the early 1800s, two of Jane’s brother’s joined the navy leaving to fight in the Napoleonic wars; they would go on to become admirals. Her naval connections can be seen in novels like Mansfield Park. After the death of her father in 1805, Jane, with her mother and sister returned to Hampshire. In 1809, her brother Edward, who had been brought up by the Knights, invited the family to the estate he had inherited at Chawton. It was in the country house of Chawton, that Jane was able to produce some of her greatest novels.

Novels of Jane Austen

Jane Austen – sketch by her sister Cassandra

Jane Austen’s novels are a reflection of her outlook on life. She spent most of her life insulated from certain sections of society. Her close friends were mainly her family and those of similar social standing. It is not surprising then that her novels focused on two or three families of the middle or upper classes. Most of her novels were also based on the idyll of rural country houses that Jane was so fond of.

Her novels also focus on the issue of gaining a suitable marriage. In the Nineteenth Century, marriage was a big issue facing women and men; often financial considerations were paramount in deciding marriages. As an author, Jane satirised these financial motivations, for example, in Pride and Prejudice the mother is ridiculed for her ambitions to marry her daughters for maximum financial remuneration. Jane, herself remained single throughout her life. Apart from brief flirtations, Jane remained single and appeared to have little interest in getting married. (unlike the characters of her novels)

The strength of Jane’s novels was her ability to gain penetrating insights into the character and nature of human relationships, from even a fairly limited range of environments and characters. In particular, she helped to redefine the role and aspirations of middle-class women like herself. Through providing a witty satire of social conventions, she helped to liberate contemporary ideas of what women could strive for.

During her lifetime the novels were reasonably popular. One of her strongest supporters was Walter Scott. He said of her novels:

“ That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. “

In the early nineteenth-century, women were not allowed to sign contracts and publishing a book had to be done by a male relative.  Through her brother, her publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Jane’s novels and on release, they sold well. At the time, the novel reading public was quite small, due to the cost of paper. The initial print run of her first novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (1811) was just 750. However, as they sold out, the book was reprinted and later books had bigger print runs. Jane earned a modest income from her book royalties but achieved little fame as the books were published anonymously.

In 1815, she learnt that the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) requested one novel to be dedicated to him. Emma is therefore dedicated to the King, even though Jane did not like the reports of his womanising and licentious behaviour.

Death of Jane Austen

Just a few years after achieving modest success as a published author, Jane began feeling unwell and, despite trying to brush it off and continue writing, her condition deteriorated rapidly. Jane died in 1816, aged only 41. She died of Addison’s disease, a disorder of the adrenal glands. She was buried at Winchester Cathedral.

There are two museums dedicated to Jane Austen.

• The Jane Austen Centre in Bath and
• The Jane Austen’s House Museum, located in Chawton Cottage, in Hampshire, where she lived from 1809 –1816

In 2005, Pride and Prejudice was voted best British novel of all time in a BBC poll.

Jane Austen Novels

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
• Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
• Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)

Unfinished fiction

• The Watsons (1804)
• Sanditon (1817)

Jane was also voted as one of the Top 100 greatest Britons.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “ Biography of Jane Austen ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , Published 1 Feb 2007. Last updated 13 February 2018.

Jane Austen – four novels

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Related pages

Jane Austen

• The Jane Austen Collection at Amazon
•  Sense and Sensibility (published 1811)
•  Pride and Prejudice (1813)
•  Mansfield Park (1814)
•  Emma (1816)
•  Persuasion (1818) posthumous
•  Northanger Abbey (1818) posthumous

External Links

• Picture from Wikipedia – Jane Austen
• Jane Austen – Pemberley.com
• Jane Austen at BBC

Jane Austen

A brief b iography.

Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of England’s foremost novelists, was never publicly acknowledged as a writer during her lifetime.

Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, the seventh child of a country clergyman and his wife, George and Cassandra Austen. Her closest friend was her only sister, Cassandra, almost three years her senior.

Education and Influences | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

St. Nicholas Church, Steventon, where Jane Austen was baptized. (Photo copyright Allan Soedring)

Jane Austen was primarily educated at home, benefiting from her father’s extensive library and the schoolroom atmosphere created by Mr. Austen’s live-in pupils.

Though she lived a quiet life, she had unusual access to the greater world, primarily through her brothers. Francis (Frank) and Charles, officers in the Royal Navy, served on ships around the world and saw action in the Napoleonic Wars. Henry, who eventually became a clergyman like his father and his brother James, was an officer in the militia and later a banker. Austen visited Henry in London, where she attended the theater, art exhibitions, and social events and also corrected proofs of her novels. Her brother Edward was adopted by wealthy cousins, the Knights, becoming their heir and later taking their name. On extended visits to Godmersham, Edward’s estate in Kent, Austen and her sister took part in the privileged life of the landed gentry, which is reflected in all her fiction.

Early Works: 1787-1798 | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

Manuscript of "The History of England," written by Jane Austen and illustrated by her sister Cassandra. (British Library)

As a child Austen began writing comic stories, now referred to as the Juvenilia. Her first mature work, composed when she was about 19, was a novella, Lady Susan , written in epistolary form (as a series of letters). This early fiction was preserved by her family but was not published until long after her death.

In her early twenties Austen wrote the novels that later became Sense and Sensibility (first called “Elinor and Marianne”) and Pride and Prejudice (originally “First Impressions”). Her father sent a letter offering the manuscript of “First Impressions” to a publisher soon after it was finished in 1797, but his offer was rejected by return post. 

Austen continued writing, revising “Elinor and Marianne” and completing a novel called “Susan” (later to become Northanger Abbey ). In 1803 Austen sold “Susan” for £10 to a publisher, who promised early publication, but the manuscript languished in his archives until it was repurchased a year before Austen’s death for the price the publisher had paid her.

View facsimiles of Austen's Juvenilia notebooks, including the History of England , on the Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition website.

Bath and Southampton Years: 1801-1809 | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

No. 4 Sydney Place, Bath (Photo copyright Allan Soedring)

When Austen was 25 years old, her father retired, and she and Cassandra moved with their parents to Bath, residing first at 4 Sydney Place. During the five years she lived in Bath (1801-1806), Austen began one novel, The Watsons , which she never completed. After Mr. Austen’s death, Austen’s brothers contributed funds to assist their sisters and widowed mother. Mrs. Austen and her daughters set up housekeeping with their close friend Martha Lloyd. Together they moved to Southampton in 1806 and economized by sharing a house with Frank and his family.

Mature Novels and Publishing Success: 1809-1817 | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

In 1809 Edward provided the women a comfortable cottage in the village of Chawton, near his Hampshire manor house. This was the beginning of Austen’s most productive period. In 1811, at the age of 35, Austen published Sense and Sensibility , which identified the author as “a Lady.” Pride and Prejudice followed in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815. The title page of each book referred to one or two of Austen’s earlier novels—capitalizing on her growing reputation—but did not provide her name.

Austen began writing the novel that would be called Persuasion in 1815 and finished it the following year, by which time, however, her health was beginning to fail. The probable cause of her illness was Addison’s Disease. In 1816 Henry Austen repurchased the rights to “Susan,” which Austen revised and renamed “Catherine.”

Final Months: 1817 | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

No. 8 College Street, Winchester, where Jane Austen died. (Photo copyright Allan Soedring)

During a brief period of strength early in 1817, Austen began the fragment later called Sanditon , but by March she was too ill to work. On April 27, 1817, she wrote her will , naming Cassandra as her heir. In May she and Cassandra moved to 8 College Street in Winchester to be near her doctor. Austen died in the early hours of July 18, 1817, and a few days later was buried in Winchester Cathedral. She was 41 years old. Interestingly, her gravestone, which is visited by hundreds of admirers each year, does not even mention that she was an author.

Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published together in December 1817 with a “Biographical Notice” written by Henry, in which Jane Austen was, for the first time in one of her novels, identified as the author of Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , and Emma .

Further Reading | Show Details ↓ Hide Details ↑

Essays in jasna publications.

Additional information about Jane Austen’s life can be found in essays published in Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line , in JASNA News , and on this site.

Selected Biographies

• J. E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections , edited by Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford University Press, 2002) (also contains biographical memoirs by Austen’s brother Henry and her nieces Anna Lefroy and Caroline Austen).
• Jan Fergus, Jane Austen: A Literary Life (Macmillan Press, 1991).
• Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
• Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

More on Jane Austen's Life ›

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Pride and Prejudice

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Jane Austen Biography

Born: December 16, 1775 Steventon, England Died: July 18, 1817 Winchester, England English author, novelist, and writer

The English writer Jane Austen was one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. In her intense concentration on the thoughts and feelings of a limited number of characters, Jane Austen created as profound an understanding and as precise a vision of the potential of the human spirit as the art of fiction has ever achieved. Although her novels received favorable reviews, she was not celebrated as an author during her lifetime.

Family, education, and a love for writing

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon, in the south of England, where her father served as a rector (preacher) for the rural community. She was the seventh of eight children in an affectionate and high-spirited family. As one of only two girls, Jane was very attached to her sister throughout her life. Because of the ignorance of the day, Jane's education was inadequate by today's standards. This coupled with Mr. Austen's meager salary kept Jane's formal training to a minimum. To supplement his income as a rector, Mr. Austen tutored young men. It is believed that Jane may have picked up Latin from staying close to home and listening in on these lessons. At the age of six she was writing verses. A two-year stay at a small boarding school trained Jane in needlework, dancing, French, drawing, and spelling, all training geared to produce marriageable young women. It was this social atmosphere and feminine identity that Jane so skillfully satirized (mocked) in her many works of fiction. She never married herself, but did receive at least one proposal and led an active and happy life, unmarked by dramatic incident and surrounded by her family.

Austen began writing as a young girl and by the age of fourteen had completed Love and Friendship. This early work, an amusing parody (imitation) of the overdramatic novels popular at that time, shows clear signs of her talent for humorous and satirical writing. Three volumes of her collected young writings were published more than a hundred years after her death.

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen's first major novel was Sense and Sensibility, whose main characters are two sisters. The first draft was written in 1795 and was titled Elinor and Marianne. In 1797 Austen rewrote the novel and titled it Sense and Sensibility. After years of polishing, it was finally published in 1811.

As the original and final titles indicate, the novel contrasts the temperaments of the two sisters. Elinor governs her life by sense or reasonableness, while Marianne is ruled by sensibility or feeling. Although the plot favors the value of reason over that of emotion, the greatest emphasis is placed on the moral principles of human affairs and on the need for enlarged thought and feeling in response to it.

Pride and Prejudice

In 1796, when Austen was twenty-one years old, she wrote the novel First Impressions. The work was rewritten and published under the title Pride and Prejudice in 1813. It is her most popular and perhaps her greatest novel. It achieves this distinction by virtue of its perfection of form, which exactly balances and expresses its human content. As in Sense and Sensibility, the descriptive terms in the title are closely associated with the two main characters.

The form of the novel is dialectical—the opposition of ethical (conforming or not conforming to standards of conduct and moral reason) principles is expressed in the relations of believable characters. The resolution of the main plot with the marriage of the two opposites represents a reconciliation of conflicting moral extremes. The value of pride is affirmed when humanized by the wife's warm personality, and the value of prejudice is affirmed when associated with the husband's standards of traditional honor.

During 1797–1798 Austen wrote Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously (after death). It is a fine satirical novel, making sport of the popular Gothic novel of terror, but it does not rank among her major works. In the following years she wrote The Watsons (1803 or later), which is a fragment of a novel similar in mood to her later Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan (1804 or later), a short novel in letters.

Mansfield Park

In 1811 Jane Austen began Mansfield Park, which was published in 1814. It is her most severe exercise in moral analysis and presents a conservative view of ethics, politics, and religion.

The novel traces the career of a Cinderella-like heroine, who is brought from a poor home to Mansfield Park, the country estate of her relative. She is raised with some of the comforts of her cousins, but her social rank is maintained at a lower level. Despite their strict upbringing, the cousins become involved in marital and extramarital tangles, which bring disasters and near-disasters on the family. But the heroine's upright character guides her through her own relationships with dignity—although sometimes with a chilling disdainfulness (open disapproval)—and leads to her triumph at the close of the novel. While some readers may not like the rather priggish (following rules of proper behavior to an extreme degree) heroine, the reader nonetheless develops a sympathetic understanding of her thoughts and emotions. The reader also learns to value her at least as highly as the more attractive, but less honest, members of Mansfield Park's wealthy family and social circle.

Shortly before Mansfield Park was published, Jane Austen began a new novel, Emma, and published it in 1816. Again the heroine does engage the reader's sympathy and understanding. Emma is a girl of high intelligence and vivid imagination who is also marked by egotism and a desire to dominate the lives of others. She exercises her powers of manipulation on a number of neighbors who are not able to resist her prying. Most of Emma's attempts to control her friends, however, do not have happy effects for her or for them. But influenced by an old boyfriend who is her superior in intelligence and maturity, she realizes how misguided many of her actions are. The novel ends with the decision of a warmer and less headstrong Emma to marry him. There is much evidence to support the argument of some critics that Emma is Austen's most brilliant novel.

Persuasion, begun in 1815 and published posthumously in 1818, is Jane Austen's last complete novel and is perhaps most directly expressive of her feelings about her own life. The heroine is a woman growing older with a sense that life has passed her by. Several years earlier she had fallen in love with a suitor but was parted from him because her class-conscious family insisted she make a more appropriate match. But she still loves him, and when he again enters her life, their love deepens and ends in marriage.

Austen's satirical treatment of social pretensions and worldly motives is perhaps at its keenest in this novel, especially in her presentation of Anne's family. The predominant tone of Persuasion, however, is not satirical but romantic. It is, in the end, the most uncomplicated love story that Jane Austen ever wrote and, to some tastes, the most beautiful.

The novel Sanditon was unfinished at her death on July 8, 1817. She died in Winchester, England, where she had gone to seek medical attention, and was buried there.

For More Information

Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography. New York: Arcade Pub., 1997.

Nokes, David. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Tyler, Natalie. The Friendly Jane Austen: A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility. New York: Viking, 1999.

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A Brief Biography of Jane Austen

David cody , associate professor of english, hartwick college.

Victorian Web Home —> Some Pre-Victorian Authors —> British Romanticism —> Jane Austen ]

Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775, to Rev. George Austen and the former Cassandra Leigh in Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh of eight children. Like the central characters in most of her novels, the Austens were a large family of respectable lineage but no fortune; her father supplemented his "living" — his clergyman's income — by farming. This lively and cheerful family frequently passed their evenings in novel-reading, charades and amateur theatrics. Among her siblings, her sister Cassandra, three years older, was her lifelong friend and confidant.

Her large family supplied material for the kind of novels popular when she wrote, but she chose not to draw upon any of it: her mother, for example, was related to a Duke who was master of Balliol College, Oxford; one aunt married an admiral; another, Mrs. Leigh Perrot, was falsely imprisoned for petty theft in 1799; a cousin, the Comtesse de Feuillide, fled the Reign of Terror after the execution of her husband, came to live with the Austens at Steventon, later fell in love with and married Jane's handsome and cheerful brother Henry (a particular favorite of Jane's), who later went bankrupt and then went into the ( Anglican ) priesthood; her eldest brother James married a duke's granddaughter; her brothers Frank (a friend of Nelson) and Charles (who married the daughter of the Attorney-General of Bermuda) became naval officers, saw action in the Napoleonic wars, and eventually wound up admirals; and her charming and amiable brother Edward was adopted by the first family of Steventon, the Thomas Knights, a wealthy and childless couple. They educated him, sent him on the grand tour, married him to the daughter of a baronet, and made him their heir. Why do you suppose she chose not to use such potentially sensational subject matter or draw upon her family's relatively close connection to important contemporary events?

Scenes from Bath: Left two: Robert Adam's Pultney Bridge and the shops lining it. Right: The Royal Crescent by John Wod the Younger. 1767. [Click on thumbnails for larger images]

In 1801, Rev. Austen retired and the family moved to Bath (much to Jane's dismay), probably so that the still-unmarried Jane and Cassandra might have a better chance of meeting marriageable men. Although she never married, Jane had several romantic liasons, the most serious with a Rev. Blackall who died suddenly, just before they were to become formally engaged. How does this history change your estimate of Elizabeth Bennet? Of Jane Bennet? After her father's death in 1805 the family moved to Southampton, and in 1809 her wealthy brother Edward was able to install Jane, Cassandra, and their mother in a "pretty cottage" back in Hampshire.

More scenes from Bath: The Assembly Rooms and a costumed re-enactor taking the waters in the Pump Room. Right: Prior Park with its Fielding associations . [Click on thumbnails for larger images]

During the eight years she lived away from Hampshire, Austen did not write very much (apparently — biographical information is sketchy), doing little more than revising Northanger Abbey . From what you know of her work, can you suggest a reason for this? What does the setting of her novels have to do with their content?

As the timeline shows, she was a writer from her teens until her death, although hardly anyone outside her immediate family knew it, since all her novels were published anonymously. Indeed, when she was living with relatives after her father's death and writing in the family parlor, she asked that a squeaky hinge on the room's swinging door not be oiled so that she would have time to hide her manuscripts when her nephews and nieces ran into the room. Gilbert and Gubar point out in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979) that "authorship for Austen is an escape from the very restraints she imposes on her female characters. And in this respect she seems typical, for women may have contributed so siginificantly to narrative fiction precisely because it effectively objectifies, even as it sustains and hides, the subjectivity of the author" (168). Test this assertion by your experience of the novel. Incidentally, Austen's identity finally became known in 1814, after Pride and Prejudice .

From 1809 on Austen lived happily with her mother and sister, her time employed in writing. Her fatal illness, then thought to be consumption, now known to be Addison's disease, first appeared in 1816. She died the following year.

Incorporated in the Victorian Web July 2000; last modified 17 August 2008

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Jane Austen Biography

It is said that Jane Austen lived a quiet life. 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, 1775 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 1764. 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 1765, they moved to Steventon, a village in north Hampshire, about 60 miles southwest of London, where her father was appointed rector.

Like their father, two of Austen’s older brothers, James and Henry, were ordained and spent most of their lives in the Church of England. 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. The third son, Edward, was adopted by their father’s wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight, and eventually inherited the Knight estate in Chawton, where Austen would later complete most of her novels. Cassandra, Austen’s only sister, was born in 1773. Austen and Cassandra were close friends and companions throughout their entire lives. It is through the remaining letters to Cassandra that biographers are able to piece Austen’s life together. 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]. She then compiled and titled them: Volume the First , Volume the Second and Volume the Third .

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. Unfortunately, Lefroy was in a position that required him to marry into money. He later married an heiress and became a prominent political figure in Ireland.

In 1795, when she was 20, Austen entered a productive phase and created what was later referred to as her “First Trilogy.” Prompted by increasing social engagements and flirtations, she began writing Elinor and Marianne , a novel in letters, which would eventually be reworked and retitled Sense and Sensibility . The following year, she wrote First Impressions , which was rejected by a publisher in 1797. It was the first version of Pride and Prejudice . She began another novel in 1798, titled Susan , which evolved into Northanger Abbey .

The Austens lived happily in Steventon until 1801, when her father suddenly announced he was moving the family to Bath. Austen was unhappy with the news. At the time, Bath was a resort town for the nearly wealthy with many gossips and social climbers. As they traveled that summer, however, she fell in love with a young clergyman who promised to meet them at the end of their journey. Several months later he fell ill and died.

Bath was difficult for Austen. She started but did not finish The Watsons and had a hard time adjusting to social demands. She accepted a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the son of an old family friend, but changed her mind the next day. A few years later, in 1805, her father died, leaving Jane, Cassandra and their mother without enough money to live comfortably. As a result, the Austen women relied on the hospitality of friends and family until they were permanently relocated to a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, belonging to her brother Edward Austen-Knight. There, Austen began the most productive period of her life, publishing several books and completing her “Second Trilogy.”

Austen finished the final drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in 1811. They were published shortly after and she immediately set to work on Mansfield Park . In 1814, Mansfield Park was published and Emma was started. By this time, Austen was gaining some recognition for her writing, despite the fact that neither Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice were published under her name.

Austen began showing symptoms of illness while she worked on Persuasion , her last completed novel. It was published with Northanger Abbey after her death. Unknown at the time, Austen most likely suffered from Addison’s disease, whose symptoms include fever, back pain, nausea and irregular skin pigmentation. On her deathbed, when asked by her sister Cassandra if there was anything she required, she requested only “death itself.” She died at the age of 41 on July 18, 1817 with her sister at her side.

Jane Austen’s Enduring Popularity

When asked why Jane Austen’s works are so popular, Richard Jenkyns, author of A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen and descendant of Austen’s older brother, said: “I don’t think it’s nostalgia for the past and all those empire-line dresses and britches tight on the thigh, all that sort of thing. I guess that she is popular because she is modern… I think her popularity is in her representing a world, in its most important aspects, that we know.”

Although living in a world that seems remote in time and place, Jane Austen’s characters have experiences and emotions that are familiar to us. They misjudge people based on appearances, they’re embarrassed by their parents, they flirt and they fall in love. Her characters face social restrictions that can be translated into any environment, from a California high school in Clueless to an interracial romance in Bride and Prejudice . The critical and commercial success of the numerous recent film and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, including nine of Pride and Prejudice , testifies to her timeless and universal appeal. Yet they fail to fully capture the genius of her writing. She was a great writer, a sharp wit and a wonderful satirist.

Takeoffs of Austen’s work, such as Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless , have been huge successes. A number of sequels to Pride and Prejudice have been written such as Lady Catherine’s Necklace by Joan Aiken; Mr. Darcy’s Daughters by Elizabeth Aston; and Pemberley: or Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant. Other novels such as Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and Kate Fenton’s Vanity and Vexation: A Novel of Pride and Prejudice have contemporary settings using Austen’s characters or plots.

In The Eye of the Story , Eudora Welty wrote that Austen’s novels withstand time because “they pertain not to the outside world but to the interior, to what goes on perpetually in the mind and heart.” Perhaps, for these reasons, Austen’s work continues to fascinate, entertain and inspire us.

• Tucker, George Holbert. Jane Austen the Woman . St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
• Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen and Her World . Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
• “Jane Austen.” Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 3: Writers of the Romantic Period, 1789-1832 . Gale Research, 1992.

Content last updated: October 31, 2005

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Jane Austen Basics

Brief background, overview of the family tree and questions related to english author jane austen..

A Timeline of Jane Austen’s Life and Works

16 December 1775 Jane Austen is born at Steventon Rectory, in Hampshire. She is the daughter of Rev. and Mrs Austen, and the seventh of eight children. She has six brothers and a sister.

1783 – 1786 Jane goes to school in Oxford, Southampton and Reading with her sister Cassandra; in 1783 she falls ill with typhus fever and nearly dies.

1787 – 1794 Jane writes her teenage writings, including Love and Friendship (1790), Lesley Castle (1792) and Lady Susan (1794).

1795 Jane writes Elinor and Marianne , an early version of Sense and Sensibility

Dec 1795 – Jan 1796 Tom Lefroy, a young lawyer, visits his relatives in Ashe, near Steventon. Jane and Tom dance and flirt.

1796 – 1797 Jane writes First Impressions (later revised and published as Pride and Prejudice ). Her father offers it to a publisher but it is rejected.

1798 – 1799 Jane writes Susan (later published as Northanger Abbey ).

1801 On Rev. Austen’s retirement, Jane and her father, mother and Cassandra leave Steventon and move to lodgings in Bath.

2 December 1802 Jane accepts an offer of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, the rich brother of her friends, but the next day she changes her mind and declines the proposal.

1803 Acting on her brother Henry’s instructions, Susan is sold by his lawyer William Seymour, to a publisher for £10, but not published.

c.1804 Jane begins writing The Watsons but does not finish it.

21 January 1805 Rev. Austen dies suddenly and is buried in Bath. Jane and Cassandra, with their mother, are left poor and dependent on their brothers for support.

1806 Jane and Cassandra, with their mother and friend Martha Lloyd, move to Southampton to live with their brother Frank and his wife.

7 July 1809 Jane and Cassandra move to Chawton with their mother and Martha Lloyd. Chawton Cottage is offered to them, rent-free, by their elder brother Edward, who inherited estates in Chawton, Steventon (Hampshire) and Godmersham (Kent) from rich relatives.

1811 Sense and Sensibility is published. Jane’s name does not appear on the book – instead it says ‘by a Lady’.

1813 Pride and Prejudice is published, ‘by the author of Sense and Sensibility ’.

1814 Mansfield Park is published. Jane begins writing Emma .

1816 Emma is published (December 1815); Jane dedicates it to the Prince Regent.

1816 Jane’s brother Henry succeeds in buying back the unpublished manuscript of Susan for £10.

1815 – 1816 Jane writes The Elliots (later published as Persuasion ). In 1816 she becomes ill but continues to write.

January 1817 Jane begins The Brothers (later published as Sanditon ), but she only completes the first twelve chapters.

April 1817 Jane’s illness confines her to bed. On 27 April she writes a short will, leaving nearly everything to her ‘dearest Sister Cassandra’.

24 May 1817 Jane leaves Chawton and moves with Cassandra to Winchester, for medical treatment.

18 July 1817 Jane dies at her lodgings in Winchester, aged 41 years old. On 24 July she is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

December 1817 Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published. For the first time, Jane Austen is identified as the author.

1869 Jane’s first biography, A Memoir of Jane Austen , written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, is published.

1925 Sanditon is published under the title Fragment of a Novel .

1949 Jane Austen’s House opens to the public.

• return to 'About Jane Austen'

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A Brief Biography of Jane Austen

By Tim Lambert

Her Early Life

Jane Austen was a great woman novelist of the early 19th century. Jane was born on 16 December 1775 in Steventon Rectory. She was the second daughter of The Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. Apart from her older sister, also called Cassandra. Jane also had 6 brothers.

In 1783 Jane and her sister were sent to boarding school. While at school they both caught a fever (possibly typhus) and Jane nearly died. Jane Austen left school in 1786.

The Great Writer

Even as a child Jane Austen loved writing and she wrote a lot of short stories called the Juvenilia. About 1795 she wrote a novel called Elinor and Marianne. In the years 1796-97, Jane Austen wrote another novel called First Impressions. It was later published as Pride and Prejudice. Then in 1798-99, Jane wrote a novel named Susan. It was published posthumously as Northanger Abbey in 1817.

In 1801 Jane Austen moved with her sister and parents to Bath. Jane Austen was a tall, slim woman. In 1802 she received a proposal of marriage from a man named Harris Bigg-Wither. At first, Jane accepted but she quickly changed her mind. Jane Austen never married. Her father George Austen died in 1805.

In 1807 Jane Austen moved to Southampton. She lived there until 1809. At that time Southampton was a flourishing port and town with a population of over 8,000. However, in 1809 Jane Austen moved to the little village of Chawton in north Hampshire.

Then in 1811 Sense and Sensibility was published. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813. Mansfield Park was published in 1814. Another book called Emma followed in 1816. Meanwhile, Jane Austen wrote Persuasion but she died before it could be published. It was published posthumously in 1817.

Jane Austen died on 18 July 1817. Jane was only 41 years old. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. 

Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire is now a museum.

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Short Biography of Jane Austen

Fresh Reads

Jane Austen was a major English novelist, whose brilliantly witty, elegantly structured satirical fiction marks the transition in English literature from 18th century Neo-classicism to19th century romanticism.

Jane Austen was born on 16 December, 1775, at the rectory in the village of Steventon, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire. The seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and his wife, Cassandra, she was educated mainly at home and never lived apart from her family. She had a happy childhood amongst all her brothers and the other boys who lodged with the family and whom Mr Austen tutored. From her older sister, Cassandra, she was inseparable. To amuse themselves, the children wrote and performed plays and impersonation, and even as a little girl Jane was encouraged to write. The reading that she did of the books in her father’s extensive library provided material for the short satirical sketches she wrote as a girl.

At the age of 14 she wrote her first novel, Love and Freindship and then A History of England by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian , together with other very amusing juvenilia. In her early twenties Jane Austen wrote the novels that were later to be reworked and published as Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey . She also began a novel called The Watsons which was never completed.

As a young woman Jane enjoyed dancing (an activity which features frequently in her novels) and she attended balls in many of the great houses of the neighbourhood. She loved the country, enjoyed long country walks, and had many Hampshire friends. It therefore came as a considerable shock when her parents suddenly announced in 1801 that the family would be moving away to Bath. Mr Austen gave the Steventon living to his son James and retired to Bath with his wife and two daughters. The next four years were difficult ones for Jane Austen. She disliked the confines of a busy town and missed her Steventon life. After her father’s death in 1805, his widow and daughters also suffered financial difficulties and were forced to rely on the charity of the Austen sons. It was also at this time that, while on holiday in the West country,Jane fell in love, and when the young man died, she was deeply upset. Later she accepted a proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, a wealthy landowner and brother to some of her closest friends, but she changed her mind the next morning and was greatly upset by the whole episode.

After the death of Mr Austen, the Austen ladies moved to Southampton to share the home of Jane’s naval brother Frank and his wife Mary. There were occasional visits to London, where Jane stayed with her favourite brother Henry, at that time a prosperous banker, and where she enjoyed visits to the theatre and art exhibitions. However, she wrote little in Bath and nothing at all in Southampton.

Then, in July, 1809, on her brother Edward offering his mother and sisters a permanent home on his Chawton estate, the Austen ladies moved back to their beloved Hampshire countryside. It was a small but comfortable house, with a pretty garden, and most importantly it provided the settled home which Jane Austen needed in order to write. In the seven and a half years that she lived in this house, she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and published them ( in 1811 and 1813) and then embarked on a period of intense productivity. Mansfield Park came out in 1814, followed by Emma in 1816 and she completed Persuasion (which was published together with Northanger Abbey in 1818, the year after her death). None of the books published in her life-time had her name on them — they were described as being written “By a Lady”. In the winter of 1816 she started Sanditon , but illness prevented its completion.

Jane Austen had contracted Addisons Disease, a tubercular disease of the kidneys. No longer able to walk far, she used to drive out in a little donkey carriage which can still be seen at the Jane Austen Museum at Chawton. By May 1817 she was so ill that she and Cassandra, to be near Jane’s physician, rented rooms in Winchester. Tragically, there was then no cure and Jane Austen died in her sister’s arms in the early hours of 18 July, 1817. She was 41 years old. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

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July 29, 2024 by Brenda S Cox

by Brenda S. Cox

A few days ago I reviewed Collins Hemingway’s fascinating new book on the development of Austen’s writing techniques, Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction : Six Novels in “a Style Entirely New.”   Today we meet with the author to get his perspectives on the book.

I asked Collins Hemingway to tell us more about Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction .

JAW: What led you to write this book, Collins?

Collins: I’ve read Austen all my life, but I did not read much commentary during my 25-year high-tech career. When I came back to Austen fulltime, I read a ton of Austen scholarship from the last 20 years. I noticed that there wasn’t much about her writing, as writing. Scholars would mention a technique and use it as a launch point for broader criticism. With rare exceptions, they would not analyze the technique itself or how it affected the reader. I saw this as an area in which I could add something new.

JAW: You have, of course, written a fiction series,  The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen . How did your experiences writing fiction about Austen feed into your development of  Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction ?

Collins: Writing the novels led directly to this book, though it took several years of hard reading, notetaking, and writing to flesh out the meat over the bones. I have shared that story on my blog .

JAW: The book is full of great insights. For you, what was one of the most helpful, something that helped you see Austen’s novels in a new way?

Collins: After completing the fiction trilogy, I went a step further, going through each of Austen’s six novels line by line, noting everything of interest to a writer. I ended up with 20 to 30 pages of handwritten notes on each one. Then I began to consolidate various topics. For instance, I ended up with five pages of notes just on description, collated from all her books, including the juvenilia. Then I examined the patterns in different aspects of writing and tried to understand how the patterns fit within and between each book.

As the patterns began to organize themselves, I realized that there was a distinct trend from early to late. In each book, Austen learned something, then applied it in the succeeding books. Like Virginia Woolf examining the early works and the unfinished works, I began to see the internal structures of each book. (As my wife would caution—in  my  opinion.) I could see how Austen was feeling her way along in the early works, then painting like a master in the later ones.

JAW: You’ve pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each of Austen’s novels. It appears that you see  Emma  as the most “perfect” novel, as other commentators do. But for you personally, which novel do you tend to enjoy re-reading the most, and why?

Collins: Depends on my mood.  P&P  for its sheer energy, and for Liz bowing to no one, ever.  Emma  for its magnificence, page by page.  Persuasion  for the depth of Anne’s feeling.  MP , though it is in no way my favorite, when I just want to admire the structural purity and the work she put into it.

JAW: You talk about many techniques of modern fiction that Jane Austen helped to develop and show how they developed in her novels over time. Could you briefly list for us some of those techniques, so readers can see some of the treats they have in store?

Collins: She was a master of dialogue probably from the day she first picked up a quill pen. Description. Behavior. Character motivation and interaction. Complex plots (without castles, brigands, or shipwrecks.) Ever deeper and subtler ways to get into her characters’ minds.

JAW: What is one takeaway that you want readers to have when they finish reading your book?

Collins: What Austen accomplished would make any author proud. But the fact that she learned all that she did on her own, away from other writers, pulling the best from a small number of others (such as Richardson, in a very specific way), building on a few good things from tradition, figuring out the rest on her own—it’s astonishing. And she did it in her too short 41.5 years of life!

JAW: What was the most fun part of the book to write?

Collins: My breakthrough in really understanding the internals came through descriptions. They unlocked the issues in  NA  and  S&S , showed how radically different  P&P  was from the earlier two, and became miraculously mature in  MP . This was the most fun. Especially when I realized the difference in the way Austen treated Lady Russell and Anne as they entered Bath in  Persuasion . It took my breath away to see what Austen had done.

You may want to read my review if you missed it earlier. This is a fascinating book if you want to better understand Jane Austen’s modern writing techniques and how she developed them herself. Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction is available from Amazon and from Jane Austen Books . Jane Austen Books is currently offering it at a substantial discount.

Brenda S. Cox is the author of  Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England . She also blogs at  Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen.

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Posted in Author interview , Jane Austen Novels , Jane Austen's World , Jane Austen's Writing Techniques | Tagged Collins Hemingway , Jane Austen and fiction writing | 8 Comments

8 Responses

As was said in this article, “But the fact that she learned all that she did on her own, away from other writers…”

She was a brilliant writer (and is my favorite author) but I’ve often wondered how much “help” Jane received from her “test readers” in evolving the plots of her books. Alas, we’ll probably never know.

Good point. She apparently read her books aloud repeatedly to family members as they were in process, and I’m sure they must have given her great feedback!

I’m now feeling a deep need to go back and reread all (except MP, I’ve never actually finished that one) and look closer at the writing itself versus losing myself in the story :)

Yes, Rebecca, great idea! Though I am currently re-reading Mansfield Park, which I’ve read many times, and I still get lost in the story! That’s one of Austen’s gifts.

Emma is good, but I have to admit that I find hearing about how “perfect” and “magnificent” it is to be off-putting. I wish critics would stop throwing around superlatives and actually be more critical when it comes to Emma. It could do with some improvements.

Well, Jennifer, Emma is not my favorite either, actually. But I’m not sure the structure is flawed, I think it’s just that I’m not crazy about Emma herself. And yet the story still grows on me when I re-read it. Probably eventually I’ll love it!

I think it’s one thing to say that “the story still grows on me when I re-read it” but something else entirely to characterize it as “perfect” or “magnificent.”

Mr. Woodhouse gets too much deference within Emma, and I think it’s unrealistic that the marriage of Emma to Mr. Knightley as providing “perfect happiness” when it takes place only because Mr. Knightley chooses to move into Hartfield because Mr. Woodhouse is scared of a chicken thief who robbed Mrs. Weston. And there’s too much discussion of colds, drafts, and putrid sore throats.

Yes, Emma can certainly use some correction, but she really only gets it when Mr. Knightley tells her off after she is rude to Miss Bates at Box Hill.

What a wonderful Q&A. Loved his process.

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The greatest jane austen books, ranked and in order.

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A reader at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of "Pride ... [+] and Prejudice," book experts, writers and fans read the entire novel in a 12-hour livestream.

British author Jane Austen lived just 41 years, but she wrote six of the most-lauded books of the 19 th century. Jane Austen novels continue to endure, remaining popular book club selections and fodder for big-screen adaptations like Clueless and Bridget Jones’s Diary . She began writing poems, stories and short plays when she was 11. Reading the Jane Austen books in order underscores how sher sharpened her writing style to critique traditional English society while combining elements of romance and satire. The best Jane Austen books include ones she’s best known for, like Pride and Prejudice , but this list of Jane Austen books ranked also shows why some of her lesser-known works may be even better.

Jane Austen Novels In Order

The Jane Austen books in order of release are:

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Northanger Abbey (1817)
• Persuasion (1817)

Top Jane Austen Books

Jane Austen wrote six novels. Four of these classics were published in her lifetime, and the last two, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion , were published posthumously. She also wrote three other unfinished books —Sanditon , The Watsons and Lady Susan , a shorter epistolary novel.

All of Jane Austen’s novels share elements of humor and offer commentary on social mores of the time. This ranking of Jane Austen books is based on literary achievement and influence, continued popularity and quality of writing.

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Books are displayed at the home of the celebrated late British author Jane Austen.

6. Mansfield Park (1814)

Austen’s third published book, Mansfield Park , is perhaps the least-talked-about of her six novels—yet it’s still quite popular. A struggling family sends their daughter, 10-year-old Fanny Price, to live with her well-to-do aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park. Bright but timid Fanny struggles to find her place as she grows into young adulthood.

Fanny lacks the fire of Austen’s other beloved female protagonists, which makes the book less compelling than her others. The novel explores themes Austen returned to over the years, including love, ethics and gender roles. It was adapted into both a TV series and a movie within the past 25 years.

This book is best for fans of characters who refuse to compromise. You can buy Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park from publisher Simon & Schuster .

5. Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Sense and Sensibility arguably ranks as Austen’s second-best-known novel, after Pride and Prejudice . Sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who couldn’t be less alike, move with their widowed mother from their grand family estate to a cottage. Their heartbreaks and triumphs illustrate the need for both sense and sensibility in life.

Austen excels at describing family dynamics and expectations—no one does it better. Her light comic touch makes what could otherwise be a preachy novel enjoyable. While Sense clearly has its charms, Austen became a better and more insightful writer as she went on, and this first novel mostly serves as a wonderful introduction to great things to come.

This book is best for hopeless romantics. You can buy Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility from publisher Simon & Schuster .

4. Northanger Abbey (1817)

A satire of popular-at-the-time gothic novels, Northanger Abbey follows 17-year-old gothic novel devotee Catherin Morland, who becomes interested in the supernatural thanks to her reading material. Austen has a ball breaking down the tropes and plots of classic gothic works.

Austen’s fiction became more realized and the characters better fleshed out as she progressed, and you can see that in both Abbey and Persuasion , her final works. Her thematic focus also became more sophisticated, and this may be her funniest novel.

This book is best for fans of parodies. You can buy Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey from publisher Simon & Schuster .

3. Persuasion (1817)

Persuasion is an underrated gem that was jointly published with Abbey after Austen’s death. She explores the sting of regret, as experienced by the 27-year-old, single Anne Elliott, who reacquaints herself with her former fiancé seven years after she broke up with him—simply because she was persuaded they weren’t a good match.

Should Anne’s love for Frederick Wentworth and desire for happiness outweigh expectations and duty? Austen expertly explores that question while also creating one of the most beloved male romantic interests in her oeuvre.

This book is best for those who like great love letters (the book includes a doozy of one). You can buy Jane Austen’s Persuasion from publisher Simon & Schuster .

2. Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s best-known and most widely adapted work, spurring everything from TV plots to movies to young adult romance novels . Elizabeth Bennet and the arrogant “Mr. Darcy” spark from the moment they meet, and her initial distaste for him slowly turns to love.

This is the ultimate enemies-to-lovers trope. Elizabeth is one of the best-drawn, most universally admired female protagonists in literature. Her will-they-or-won’t-they with Darcy has made readers swoon for generations.

This book is best for new Austen readers or anyone who loved the many adaptations of the book over the years. You can buy Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from publisher Simon & Schuster .

Keira Knightley meets fans at the UK premiere of the film "Pride and Prejudice."

1. Emma (1815)

While Pride may be more famous, Emma is the quintessential Jane Austen novel. Its plucky protagonist, who envisions herself a matchmaker but rarely picks a good one, is arguably Austen’s most interesting leading character because she exhibits great complexity. She gradually overcomes her vanity to become more attuned to those around her.

The hit teen comedy Clueless was famously based on Emma, but readers should pick up Austen’s fourth book to learn compelling insights about the role of marriage two centuries ago.

This book is best for historical fiction fans You can buy Jane Austen’s Emma from publisher Simon & Schuster .

Bottom Line

To write one book that stands the test of time is an impressive feat. The fact that all the Jane Austen books remain as timely, interesting, funny and poignant as they did upon their original release more than two centuries ago is downright remarkable. Pick one to dive into today!

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Inside the Controversial Plan to Turn a Hotel Where Jane Austen Attended Balls Into Student Dorms

Devoted readers are worried about the fate of the historic Dolphin Hotel in southern England

Ellen Wexler

Assistant Editor, Humanities

When she was just shy of 33, Jane Austen attended a ball at the Dolphin Hotel in Southampton, England. Judging by a letter she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, in 1808, she had a decent, if unremarkable, time:

Martha [Lloyd] liked it very much, and I did not gape till the last quarter of an hour. It was past 9 before we were sent for, and not 12 when we returned. The room was tolerably full, and there were, perhaps, 30 couple of dancers. The melancholy part was to see so many dozen young women standing by without partners, and each of them with two ugly naked shoulders.

It was Austen’s second visit to the Dolphin. She had celebrated her 18th birthday at the hotel in 1793, about 15 years earlier. Based on these events, some contemporary readers consider the venue a key stop on Austen pilgrimages.

Earlier this month, the Southampton City Council approved plans to convert the Dolphin into dormitories. The decision has unsettled Austen devotees, who have been protesting the proposal, sometimes in Regency costume , for months.

The Dolphin was a historic structure even in Austen’s day. It has existed since at least 1550 (and perhaps even earlier ); by 1750, it had become a thriving social hub. Many of its most recognizable features—like the large bow windows—were added around 1760 . Austen was by no means the Dolphin’s only famous guest. The hotel hosted the likes of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray , historian Edward Gibbon and even Queen Victoria .

But Austen has something that Thackeray, Gibbon and Victoria lack: a devoted 21st-century fan base.

That’s why the Regency-era novelist is so entwined with the hotel’s lore. It’s why the Dolphin has signage detailing Austen’s visits to the premises. And it’s why, when officials announced plans to convert the historic hotel into student housing, many so-called Janeites were crushed.

Critics of the plan include members of the Sarah Siddons Fan Club , a Southampton-based historical reenactment theater company named for a famous 18th-century actress (who happens to be mentioned in Austen’s letters). “As soon as I found out about it, I contacted our theater group so they knew what to do … objection, objection, objection,” Norma Mackey, a retired healthcare worker and member of the company, said earlier this year, per the Guardian ’s Steven Morris. “They will lose a gem.”

Many others submitted objections during a public comment period. Jennifer Weinbrecht, the owner of Jane Austen Books in Ohio, asked officials to “consider the cultural importance of the Dolphin [Hotel] as the only remaining structure in Southampton with Jane Austen connections.”

Meanwhile, some Austen fans took a middle-ground approach. “Whilst we are not enthusiastic about this proposed change of use, it does mean that the building will have a future, which it currently does not,” wrote the Hampshire branch of the Jane Austen Society . “We are realistic in our recognition of there being no available funds to develop this building into a heritage asset. However, we would hope this important historic site will not be completely lost to those of us who love Jane Austen and her novels.”

The Dolphin’s fortunes have been mixed in recent decades. The hotel was closed for the duration of a £4 million redevelopment, eventually reopening in 2010 under the Mercure brand. In 2021, it closed once again due to a “ significant drop in occupancy .” It hasn’t been accessible to guests since then, though it briefly served as a shelter for asylum seekers .

According to BBC News ’ Jason Lewis, developers have vowed to maintain the building’s historic character. They are also planning to create a “museum or interpretation center” dedicated to Austen. “A plaque in the lobby seems likely,” writes Literary Hub ’s Brittany Allen. “And the dining hall and ground floor will allegedly be available to the public ‘by appointment.’”

Such measures are unlikely to satisfy Austen fans in Southampton, some of whom feel linked to the author via her two brief visits to the hotel. Cheryl Butler, founder of the Sarah Siddons Fan Club, tells the Telegraph ’s Albert Tait that Austen stayed in Southampton during “quite important periods of her life,” which were “critical times in her development as a writer.”

Indeed, when Austen was 19, around a year after her first visit to the Dolphin in 1793, she started working on Sense and Sensibility . When she returned in late 1808, she was still unpublished. In 1809, however, she began seriously revising Sense and Sensibility , ultimately publishing the novel—her first—in 1811.

In the 1808 letter to Cassandra, Austen reflected on the passage of time between her visits to the venue.

“It was the same room in which we danced 15 years ago,” she wrote. “I thought it all over, and in spite of the shame of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as happy now as then.”

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Ellen Wexler is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities.

How to Write a Story Retelling

Today’s post is by developmental editor and book coach  Hannah Kate Kelley .

What is a retelling?

A retelling is a new spin on a classic story like a fairy tale, myth, or other piece of literature. The writer takes a pre-existing story to borrow some of the original elements while changing others.

Writers love retellings because the story framework is pre-made and there’s already a proven audience for the original tale. Retellings are also empowering because writers can bring fresh perspectives to age-old stories.

But aren’t retellings theft? Actually, no. Retellings essentially honor the original text by reopening the conversation the original author started. Instead of feeling like a thief, think of your adapted story as playing off of, countering, and contributing to that initial conversation.

In your life, you’ve probably encountered many retellings from Disney’s fairy tale renditions to countless comic book blockbuster remakes. In this article, we’re going to look at the following popular retelling examples:

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (a retelling of several stories, including Beauty and the Beast , the Norwegian tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon , and Tam Lin )
• Circe by Madeline Miller (a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey )
• Clueless by H. B. Gilmour (a retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma )
• Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix by Ibi Zoboi (a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice )
• The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby )
• “The Husband Stitch” featured in Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (a retelling of “The Girl with the Green Ribbon”)

3 characteristics of retelling

Before you build your outline, let’s explore the three primary characteristics of a retold story.

A retelling should be recognizable

Retellings are all about celebrating the familiar. Your story retelling needs to include all or many of the major original elements, even if you make significant changes to the setting, plot, characters, and themes. But how close of a retelling do you need to write? You’ve got two options: write a loose retelling or a close retelling.

In a loose retelling, writers can use inspiration from various sources in any degree, meaning they have recognizable characters, events, themes, and other elements, but their main plot will divert away from the original storyline.

Sarah J. Maas does this with her fantasy novel A Court of Thorns and Roses by drawing from Beauty and the Beast , East of the Sun and West of the Moon , and Tam Lin . In terms of her original inspiration fairy tales and legends, Maas says , “[ A Court of Thorns and Roses ] actually wound up going away from those things; it started off as a retelling of the more original fairy tales, but then moved away.” Though the story begins with a young woman stolen away to live in the home of a powerful and mysterious creature as punishment for her transgression (similar to Beauty and the Beast ), protagonist Feyre delves into broader political and inter-court conflicts as the story goes on, culminating in a dangerous physical and emotional trial. Maas uses some of the character traits and plot events from the original texts, but ultimately creates her own storyline.

In a close retelling, writers can still change several elements of the original text, but they tend to stick closer to the main plot by using the same events in the same order, making only small variations. For example, in The Chosen and the Beautiful , writer Nghi Vo retains not only the 1920s era and several main character from the original text The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but Vo also keeps the key plot events, such as Gatsby’s extravagant parties, his mounting obsession with Daisy Buchanan, and the climactic confrontation in a New York hotel. The unique angle, a queer Vietnamese adoptee narrator, doesn’t change the plot events significantly.

A retelling should also be a standalone

Your retelling should be enjoyable to read whether your audience has read the original text or not. While many of your readers will be familiar with the original story and therefore enjoy the comparisons and allusions you draw between them, your story still needs to be complete on its own.

A retelling must be legal

We already established that retellings are not theft, but there’s a caveat: it all comes down to what is and is not listed on the public domain (also known as the commons), which is a collection of creative works that are no longer protected by intellectual property laws. Once a story hits this list, you are free to adapt and reproduce it any way you wish. That’s why people love to use fairy tales for their adaptations, because no one owns the copyrights to these stories any longer. However, the rules differ from country to country, as well as by the book’s individual copyright, so it’s best to do your due diligence and research before selecting the story you wish to retell. ( Here a starting guide from Jane on that. )

Are retellings the same as fanfiction?

In many ways, yes. But they are treated differently in terms of both legal use and reader expectations, so they are essentially different genres. Fanfiction is more about celebrating the copyrighted characters of a story which are not yet in the public domain. Can you base your retelling off a non-public domain work? Some writers do. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James actually started out as fanfiction of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Though the book has several similarities with the original source, James retroactively removed the copyrighted material in order to publish. Talk about grey area! While it is possible to transform fanfiction into a legally sound published book, there are more hoops to jump through.

I’m no lawyer, so we won’t get into the nitty-gritty of what is and isn’t legally allowed for non-public domain works. Just do your research and be prepared to consult legal counsel if you plan to publish your fanfiction for profit.

So let’s talk about how to write your own retelling. If you’d like a workbook to pair with the following exercises, you can download the free Story Retelling Workbook .

Choose your retelling angle

The first step is to explore what you are going to do differently and why. What will your unique spin be? While this angle can change later, you want to capture this first spark of inspiration because this is the reason you’re writing a retelling after all: to make this story your own.

To find your special angle, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you love about the original story? Explore what made you want to pick up the book in the first place, or what’s kept this tale top of mind for you.
• What’s missing from this story? Consider which parts didn’t resonate with you or where you can see room for improvement.
• Can you see yourself in this story? If you can, consider what you would do differently as one of the main characters and how that might send the story down a different path. If you can’t, consider how your perspective or knowledge could alter the story if you were suddenly thrust into the pages.
• Why are you writing this story? Consider what unique perspectives you as the author bring to your story.
• And why now ? If you have other story ideas you want to pursue, consider why you want to start with this one first.

Once you’ve embarked on a little soul-searching, you might have a good list of where to take your story. If not, consider these common retelling angle examples:

• Feature a new character’s perspective. You can use a non-main character from the original text, like Nghi Vo does in The Chosen and the Beautiful by using Nick Carraway’s friend and lover Jordan Baker as the narrator instead. Or like writer Madeline Miller does with Odysseus’ villain scorned witch-goddess Circe in the eponymous novel Circe (instead of Odysseus). You can also invent an entirely new character to take the spotlight.
• Imagine the antagonist as the protagonist. Similar to drawing from a new character’s perspective, this approach goes as far as reclaiming and explaining the villain’s side of things. For example, in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire the story is told from the Wicked Witch of the West’s point of view, offering a backstory that humanizes her and explores the events that leading up to her infamy. And in the Jane Eyre retelling Wide Sargasso Sea , author Jean Rhys gives Bertha Mason her own voice and backstory, who was originally a minor character depicted as Mr. Rochester’s insane wife he kept hidden in the attic.
• Explore race, class, gender, or a new cultural lens. Many old texts can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. In “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado, the narrator explores women’s bodily boundaries in her retelling of “The Girl with the Green Ribbon.” Her rendition critiques the original short horror story, where a woman’s husband constantly pesters her about her permanent neck ribbon until she finally allows him to pull the string and immediately dies from the untying that kept her head on her neck. Machado calls out the way men use and control women’s bodies in her retelling.
• Drop the characters into a new setting or era. For older works especially, it can be fun to use a modern setting, just as H. B. Gilmour does in her popular Emma -adapted novel Clueless , by bringing the romance into a contemporary (okay, well … 90s ) high school setting complete with stoners, jocks, and popular kids.
• Switch up the genre. Consider altering the genre toward horror, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, mystery, and literary fiction, or even a different age genre like children’s, middle grade, young adult, or adult. A good example of this is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, who transforms the original romance story into a horror novel by incorporating zombies, a pervasive sense of danger, and violent encounters with the undead.

If you’re swimming in good ideas, narrow down your selection to one story angle. Then write your unique angle in one simple sentence. For example, I want to explore what the wicked stepmother would look like in Cinderella if she was actually just trying to help.

Analyze the original text

Before you can write your own version, get your analytical hat on and let’s look at the original (OG) story to see which elements you want to keep and which you want to change.

At this point, you want to be in the research phase rather than the writing phase, though you can jot down ideas as they come up. But don’t get lost in research! For this exercise, try to only gather enough information to fill out this brief analysis.

We’re going to look at both the OG text Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and the retelling Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix by Ibi Zoboi. While you want to focus on your analysis before crafting your own story, it’s helpful to discuss these two examples side by side.

Plot points

First, look for all the major plot points that make the OG story recognizable by uncovering how the main plot and the main characters progress to the end. Depending on how loose or close you want your retelling to be, you may choose to diverge away from these plot events—which can be an interesting way to subvert reader expectations and dive into the story you really want to tell. Regardless of whether you want to incorporate all the plot points or build in your own twists, it’s important to be aware of a baseline series of events first.

Let’s break down the major plot points of Pride and Prejudice .

Setup: The marriage prospects of a young woman named Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters are a constant concern for their mother because of the estate’s lack of a male heir.

Inciting Incident: The wealthy and eligible bachelor Mr. Bingley rents the nearby Netherfield Park, sparking excitement among the Bennet family and their neighbors. His friend, the wealthy and proud Mr. Darcy, accompanies Mr. Bingley to help find him a suitable match and immediately butts heads with Elizabeth.

Midpoint: After a series of rising romantic tension, Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth in a manner that reveals his feelings but also insults her family, which leads her to reject him.

Climax: Elizabeth’s younger sister Lydia Bennet elopes with sly militia man Mr. Wickham, threatening the Bennet family’s reputation.

Resolution: After Darcy’s intervention to save her family’s reputation from Mr. Wickham’s hasty elopement, Elizabeth reevaluates her feelings for him. Darcy renews his proposal, this time with humility and love, and Elizabeth accepts, leading to their marriage and the resolved misunderstandings.

And now let’s look at the major plot points of Pride , which is a close retelling:

Set Up: In the contemporary Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, teenager Zuri Benitez and her family navigate rapid gentrification as she prepares to write her college application essay.

Inciting Incident: The arrival of the wealthy Darcy family, including two handsome and single teenage sons, sparks tension as they move into the renovated mini mansion across the street. Zuri and the younger son Darius immediately butt heads.

Midpoint: After weeks of romantic tension, Zuri and Darius kiss. He asks her out on a date, but she refuses him when she finds out he slighted her older sister and a heated confrontation about their biases and assumptions ensues.

Climax: At a house party, tensions rise between Zuri and Darius over the division between their socioeconomic worlds, when Zuri then discovers her creepy ex Warren is preying on her thirteen-year-old drunk sister.

Resolution : Zuri and Darius reconcile their differences after saving her sister, finding common ground amidst the changing landscape of their neighborhood, even when Zuri and her family have to move to a new home. And Zuri finally finds the inspiration she needs to write her college application essay.

Whether you choose to change the setting or not, it is important to understand the context in which the author wrote the OG story. Not only will this help you understand where the writer came from, but it will also help you understand how they framed the events and crafted their characters.

Obviously, the world looked very different when Jane Austen penned Pride and Prejudice . Young women had strict roles in society which largely had to do with finding a suitable husband to marry, so the story’s subject matter suits the slower, rural setting where the cast of characters can meet exciting marriage prospects among both wealthy gentlemen visitors and the militia.

You can keep the same setting or change it entirely, and both have their advantages. A closer retelling with a similar setting will make the other contrasts starker, whereas a different era or geographical location will make these contrasts subtler.

The setting in Pride and Prejudice :

Location: Meryton, England, a fictional small market town based in rural Hertfordshire and Derbyshire

Time Period: Early 19th century

Setting-Specific Elements

• Formal balls and “calling on” neighbors, which were some of the only ways gentlemen and ladies could socialize and assess marriage prospects.
• Handwritten letters, meant to show the most honest way to communicate feelings in great detail.
• Long walks, meant to show how characters could be reflective and independent, as well as how they could have chance encounters and travel without carriages.

The setting of Pride :

Location: Brooklyn, New York in the United States, specifically in the Bushwick neighborhood

Time Period: Contemporary 2010s era

• Block parties, dates and community events, which serve as modern equivalents to formal balls, where characters socialize, interact, and form romantic relationships within their neighborhood.
• Texting, like the handwritten letters in Pride and Prejudice , allows characters to communicate their feelings quickly and directly.
• Gentrification, where the changing streets of Bushwick expose the community’s evolution, their own identities, and their encounters with others.

The most memorable parts of retellings are arguably the characters, whose voices and actions stick with readers long after finishing a book. It’s important to analyze who the primary, secondary, and tertiary characters are, what their top traits are, and how they provide all conflict and support for the protagonists.

This is also a good time to note harmful stereotypes the OG text might be perpetuating. If a character’s primary traits are rooted in sexist tropes, like how many of our fairy tales depict women antagonists as ugly, be aware of how you can twist this stereotype on its head.

The main cast of characters in Pride and Prejudice:

• Miss Elizabeth Bennet: The primary protagonist, known for her sharp wit and independence
• Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: A wealthy, reserved, and seemingly proud gentleman who becomes one of Elizabeth’s love interests
• Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s internal pride and prejudice
• Mr. Wickham: A charming but deceitful militia officer

Significant or memorable secondary and tertiary characters:

• Mr. Bennet: Elizabeth’s sarcastic and laid-back father
• Mrs. Bennet: Elizabeth’s frivolous and marriage-obsessed mother
• Miss Jane Bennet: Elizabeth’s beautiful and gentle older sister
• Mr. Bingley: A wealthy and amiable gentleman who rents Netherfield Park

The main cast of characters in Pride :

• Zuri Benitez: The primary protagonist and sole narrator, a proud Afro-Latina teenager who fiercely loves her Bushwick neighborhood and struggles with the changes brought by gentrification
• Darius Darcy: A wealthy and reserved teenager from the gentrifying Darcy family who moves into the renovated mini mansion across from Zuri’s home
• Zuri and Darius’ internal pride and prejudice
• Gentrification and its impact on Zuri’s community
• Warren: a slick neighborhood boy who takes a romantic interest in Zuri, hiding his past of taking advantage of young girls
• Janae Benitez: Zuri’s older sister
• Ainsley Darcy: Darius’s kind, puppy-dog-like older brother who takes an interest in Zuri’s sister Janae
• Madrina: Zuri’s wise and supportive godmother

Writing style and tone

While uncovering these storytelling tools might require a closer read, they can help you choose which literary devices you want to keep or toss. If you don’t want to reread the text now, just think back to what the most memorable bits of dialogue, description, and overall tone are.

A story’s writing style can include a number of things, including literary devices like deus ex machina or foreshadowing, point of view and narrators, symbolism and allegory, use of repetition, and distinctive physical features or objects like the glass slipper in Cinderella .

A story’s tone is the attitude in which the writer chose to tell this story, such as light, dark, ironic, sappy, warm, scary, and realistic.

The writing style and tone of Pride and Prejudice :

• The famous, satirical opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
• Elizabeth Bennet is the sole narrator.
• Repetition of Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal, so readers can see how both protagonists have grown and resolved their pride (and prejudice) by the second proposal.
• A humorous and satirical tone, exposing the absurdities and injustices of the marriage market and the limited roles available to 19th-century women.
• A realistic premise, where Austen’s focus on the domestic sphere, courtship, and family dynamics made her stories relatable to a wide audience. (Unlike the sensationalist novels of her time, Austen grounded her stories in the everyday realities of middle-class life.)

The writing style and tone of Pride :

• A similarly satirical spin on Jane Austen’s first line: “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up.”
• Zuri is the sole narrator.
• The inclusion of younger characters (teenagers rather than twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds) and more young adult romance tropes like Zuri’s annoyance with Darius, yet the inability to stop caring about what he thinks of her when they first meet.
• Essay snippets and poems scattered throughout the text, showing what Zuri is thinking and feeling in a unique format, as well as how she plans to write her college application essay.
• A realistic premise, where Zoboi grounds Zuri’s life in Brooklyn with a healthy dose of realism, making the story feel entirely possible in a modern-day context.

Central theme

There are often several themes in every story, so choose the most central one or the one that speaks loudest to you. Sum up the theme in one word or a brief sentence.

Some themes are timeless, and you can reuse them to show how the theme still applies to modern-day life. Whereas other themes are a little outdated. Take Beauty and the Beas t, for example, where the forced imprisonment and Stockholm Syndrome that Belle endures complicates the central theme of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” You might also want to choose an entirely new theme that speaks to you more, whether it’s a lesser theme of the OG text or something close to your heart.

Whether you want to use the same central theme, put a spin on it, or tap into a lesser theme, readers will expect your retelling to continue the original conversation, so to speak. Assuming that readers are familiar with the original text, consider how the new theme will provide commentary on the old one.

• The central theme of Pride and Prejudice : The exploration of love and marriage by overcoming personal flaws like pride and prejudice to achieve mutual respect.
• The central theme of Pride : The exploration of love, identity, community, and cultural pride amidst gentrification in contemporary Brooklyn.

Note that while Pride still explores love, pride, and prejudice themes, there is a stronger emphasis on race and class intersections. In order to better encapsulate these new themes, Zoboi made the setting modern-day, made the Darcy family new homeowners rather than renters, and changed the age of the characters to cater to young adult readers who would really benefit from these themes of love and identity.

Outline your retelling

Whew! You’ve squared away the hard work of analyzing the OG text. Now it’s your turn to build an outline of your own story. If your angle has pivoted after the last step, that’s okay. Create a new one-sentence angle and let’s get cracking.

Not every writer enjoys the outlining process (looking at you, pantsers!). However, because a retelling is based on another piece of literature, it’s helpful for writers to first map out the similarities and differences between the two stories.

Aim for a simple outline using the following same template from your OG text analysis. If you want a simple worksheet to use for this exercise, you can download my free version here .

• How will the story begin?
• What is the inciting incident that sets the main plot line in motion?
• What is the midpoint?
• What is the climax?
• How will the story end?
• Where will this story take place?
• When will this story take place?
• What are some setting-specific elements?
• Who are the protagonists?
• Who / what is the antagonist?
• Who are the other significant or memorable secondary and tertiary characters who make an appearance?

Writing style & tone

• What are some memorable writing style devices that stick out to you?
• What is the tone?
• What is the one-sentence central theme?

After you’ve built out the initial storyline, characters and theme, you can go into more depth on your outline. And while you can create your outline in any order, it’s helpful to work backwards from theme to plot points if you’re not yet sure of the exact events you want to depict in your story. Evaluate and adjust your roadmap as needed.

Hot tip: If you want to compare and contrast your retelling with the original, highlight in pen or highlighter what you’re keeping the same versus what you’re changing. That way, you’ll be able to assess the differences easier when you place them side by side.

By now, you understand the key characteristics of a retelling. If you want an easy place to map out your retelling outline, get my free Story Retelling Workbook . Now all that’s left to do is write your “tale as old as time.”

Hannah Kate Kelley is a developmental editor and Author Accelerator certified book coach helping fiction writers write, revise and launch their stories. She lives in New York City with her partner. For more writing resources, head over to www.kelleyeditorial.com .

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This was so fun to read, even after the fact! I transposed Pride and Prejudice into the world of contemporary Orthodox Jewish matchmaking (“Pride and Preference”). The themes of money, family reputation and lineage, and harmful gossip (not to mention a rebellious teen) fit seamlessly into this world! And I did begin with “It is a truth universally accepted..”

Thank you for reading, Barbara! Pride and Prejudice really works well in retellings, I agree. The themes are still so resonant. And what a unique retelling angle! Did you finish writing the book?