Author: Jane Austen

About:

Jane Austen was born the second youngest of eight children to George and Cassandra Austen in Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England. Growing up, Austen read her own short poems and stories to her family during the evenings and received encouragement to continue writing.

Some of Austen’s earliest works (1787-1793) are compiled and referred to as the Juvenilia. Although Austen wrote much of her now-famous work pre-1800, it was kept in the family. Such as Pride & Prejudice, which Austen began in 1796, but wasn’t published until 1813.

Like many women of the day, Austen had difficulties getting published. Her first official novel, Sense & Sensibility was published anonymously, simply saying it was “By a Lady”. After the success of her first work, following books may have also included that it was “By the author of Sense & Sensibility“.

Although her works didn’t contain her name, her identity was known by some. This included the Prince Regent, George IV, who was a fan of her works. Unfortunately Austen wasn’t a fan of him, or his librarian James Clarke, who evidently kept sending Austen letters about what she should write. Austen wrote Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters, a short satiric outline of what Clarke kept telling her to do.

None of Austen’s works were published with her name until after her death when her family posthumously published her last works, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Since 1832, when Richard Bentley came to possess all copyrights to Jane Austen’s novels, her books have never been out of print.

Jane Austen was known to subvert common tropes of her time period, one of which was Gothic Fiction. Instead of rejecting the genre or creating a parody of it, Austen transformed settings and situations. This allowed for a subversion of the expected, or well known “tropes”. Her unique way of challenging the readers expectations is likely a key reason her works are still popular today.