The Regency Reading Room

Jane Austen

Her life, her six novels, and twelve things you may not know about the clergyman's daughter who changed the love story for ever.

Her life in brief

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. She grew up in a lively, bookish household, writing comic stories and plays to entertain her family, and her closest friend all her life was her only sister, Cassandra.

In 1801 the family moved to Bath. After her father died in 1805, Jane, her mother and sister lived for some years with relatives and in lodgings, until in 1809 her brother Edward gave them a cottage in the village of Chawton, Hampshire. There, at a small table by the window, she revised her early novels and wrote her later ones.

She never married. She died in Winchester on 18 July 1817, aged just 41, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Her six novels, in order

Novel	Published	In a sentence
Sense and Sensibility	1811	Two sisters, one all good sense and one all feeling, learn a little from each other.
Pride and Prejudice	1813	Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy get each other entirely wrong, and then entirely right.
Mansfield Park	1814	Quiet Fanny Price holds to her principles in a house full of charming, careless people.
Emma	1815	A clever young matchmaker manages everyone's love life except her own.
Northanger Abbey	1817*	A young reader of Gothic novels learns that real life is stranger, and kinder.
Persuasion	1817*	Anne Elliot gets a second chance with the naval captain she was persuaded to refuse.

*Published together a few months after her death, in December 1817 (the title pages say 1818).

Twelve surprising facts

1. She never put her name on a book. Her first novel was published as "By a Lady"; later ones said "By the Author of Sense and Sensibility".
2. Pride and Prejudice began as First Impressions. She wrote it in her early twenties, and a publisher turned it down by return of post, without even reading it.
3. She sold it for £110. She had hoped for £150. Because the publisher bought the copyright, he kept the profits when it sold out.
4. She once said yes to a proposal, then changed her mind overnight. In December 1802 she accepted Harris Bigg-Wither, a wealthy family friend, and withdrew the next morning.
5. Sense and Sensibility was first called Elinor and Marianne.
6. Northanger Abbey was sold in 1803 and then sat in a drawer. The publisher paid £10 for it, under the title Susan, and never printed it. Her brother Henry later bought it back.
7. The Prince Regent was a fan. He kept a set of her novels in each of his houses, and Emma is dedicated to him (by royal invitation, not her own wish).
8. She wrote at a tiny table. The little twelve-sided walnut table she wrote at can still be seen at her house in Chawton.
9. She left a novel unfinished. She was writing Sanditon, a comedy about a seaside resort, when illness stopped her in 1817.
10. Her family burned most of her letters. Cassandra destroyed many after Jane's death, so we know far less about her private life than readers would like.
11. Her gravestone doesn't mention her books. It praises her kindness and her mind, but says nothing about her writing.
12. She is on the money. Her portrait appears on the Bank of England's £10 note, issued in 2017, two hundred years after her death.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
The opening line of Pride and Prejudice, 1813

If you love Jane Austen

You might enjoy reading in the world she wrote about: drawing rooms, country houses, misunderstandings, and love that has to be earned.

The Regency Reading Room is written by Regency romance author Victoria Ashbourne. Book suggestions on these pages include her own novels.