Jane Austen - Foundations of Austen's Early Life

Jane Austen's Early Life and Literary Formation Jane Austen's development as a writer was deeply shaped by her family circumstances, education, and the intellectual culture of her household. Understanding her early years provides crucial context for her major novels and the distinctive style she would become known for. Family Background and Socio-Economic Position Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, into a family of modest means within the English gentry. Her father, George Austen, was the rector (clergyman) of Steventon and Deane, positions that gave the family respectability but limited income. Though George came from a once-wealthy wool-merchant family, their circumstances had been reduced by the time of Jane's birth. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen, came from the more prominent Leigh family and brought with her modest expectations of inheritance. The crucial fact about the Austen household is its financial precariousness. George Austen's combined annual income from his two church livings was approximately £200—a sum far below the £1,000 to £5,000 that characterized typical gentry income. This limited means meant the family could not afford the fashionable education or social advantages available to wealthier families. However, this limitation had an unexpected benefit: it forced the Austens to develop an intellectual household culture where reading, writing, and conversation became primary sources of entertainment and education. Jane had seven siblings: brothers James, George, Edward, Francis, and Henry, and sisters Cassandra and another sister. Her close relationship with her sister Cassandra would prove especially formative, as Cassandra became her closest confidant and creative collaborator throughout her life. The family lived in the rectory at Steventon, a 16th-century house that required ongoing renovations. This home became the intellectual and creative center where Jane's writing would flourish. Education: Formal Schooling and Self-Directed Learning Jane's formal education was brief and limited. In 1783, when she was seven years old, Jane and her sister Cassandra attended a school in Oxford run by Ann Cawley, then briefly attended school in Southampton. However, this formal schooling did not last long—the girls' schooling was interrupted and they returned home. What proved far more important to Jane's development was home education. After leaving formal school, her education became largely self-directed, though guided and supported by her father and her older brothers. This was actually common for girls of the period who could not attend universities (which were closed to women), but the Austen household was unusually well-equipped for self-education. Jane had access to her father's extensive library, which contained works of literature, philosophy, and history. She also had access to the library of Warren Hastings, a family friend and powerful colonial administrator. These collections gave her exposure to contemporary and classic literature—works by authors like Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, and others who would profoundly influence her own writing. Learning Through Performance: Amateur Theatricals A significant but often overlooked aspect of Jane's education was the amateur theatricals regularly staged in the Austen household. The family performed plays including Sheridan's The Rivals and Garrick's Bon Ton. These performances taught Jane about dramatic structure, character portrayal, dialogue, and the subtleties of social performance. She absorbed lessons about how to write convincing dialogue and create comic situations—skills that would serve her brilliantly in her novels. Early Creative Writing: The Juvenilia (1787–1793) Beginning at age eleven, Jane began writing poems, stories, and parodies for family amusement. This was not unusual—writing for family entertainment was a common pastime among educated families of the period. What was unusual was the quality, sophistication, and prolific output of Jane's early work. By her teenage years, Jane had compiled twenty-nine of her early pieces into three carefully bound notebooks, which she titled Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. These are collectively known as the Juvenilia, and they demonstrate a writer already practicing her craft with remarkable skill. Key Juvenile Works The Juvenilia reveal Jane's early interests and developing technique: "Love and Freindship" (1790) is a short epistolary tale (told through letters) that viciously satirizes the sentimental novel of sensibility—a popular literary genre that celebrated extreme emotion and romantic excess. Jane's sharp wit is already evident in her mockery of self-indulgent characters. "The History of England" (1791) parodies the historical writing of Oliver Goldsmith, with deliberately prejudiced and absurd judgments about English monarchs. This work was illustrated with watercolor miniatures created by her sister Cassandra, showing how the siblings collaborated creatively. The work demonstrates young Jane's ability to parody literary conventions. "Catharine, or the Bower" (1792) is a longer work of Gothic fiction that foreshadows the full Gothic satire she would later achieve in Northanger Abbey. This piece shows her beginning to explore the conventions of the Gothic novel genre—mysterious mansions, shadowy secrets, and melodramatic suspense—though still with a juvenile sensibility. "Sir Charles Grandison, or the Happy Man" (1793) parodies Samuel Richardson's famous novel Sir Charles Grandison, mocking its hero and its sentimental conventions. "Lady Susan" (1794) represents an ambitious step forward. This epistolary novella features a morally dubious heroine—a widow who manipulates those around her for financial and social advantage. The work shows Jane experimenting with a more complex characterization and a more morally ambiguous protagonist than her earlier works featured. These juvenile works are significant because they reveal that Jane was already developing the satirical approach that would define her mature novels. She was not simply learning to write; she was learning to critique literary conventions through parody and satire. She was discovering how to create comedy through exaggeration, irony, and the deflation of pretension. <extrainfo> The Juvenilia also reveal Jane's wide reading and her confidence in addressing literary works and conventions. For a young writer to parody famous authors like Richardson and Goldsmith suggests both her familiarity with their works and her early sense that she could critique and reimagine them. </extrainfo> First Full-Length Novels (1796–1798) By her early twenties, Jane had moved beyond the short pieces of her juvenilia and was attempting full-length novels. This period produced works that would be revised and eventually published as some of her most famous novels. "First Impressions" (Later Pride and Prejudice) Jane began writing First Impressions in 1796 and completed a draft by August 1797, when she was only twenty-one years old. Her father was so pleased with the work that he submitted it to a London publisher—though it was rejected and never published during his lifetime. The novel would eventually be published in 1813 as Pride and Prejudice, but only after substantial revision and after Jane's life circumstances had changed dramatically. Revision and Development: Sense and Sensibility Between November 1797 and mid-1798, Jane undertook a major revision of an earlier work called Elinor and Marianne. She converted it from epistolary form (told through letters) to third-person narrative, fundamentally changing how the story was told. This revised version eventually became Sense and Sensibility, which would be published in 1811. This revision process reveals that Jane was not simply a natural writer who produced perfect drafts. She was actively learning her craft, experimenting with different narrative techniques, and reworking her material to achieve greater sophistication and clarity. Gothic Satire: Susan (Later Northanger Abbey) In 1798, Jane began a new work called Susan, which continued and expanded the Gothic satire she had begun in her juvenilia. Susan directly mocked the Gothic novels that were wildly popular in the 1790s—novels filled with mysterious castles, sinister secrets, and heroines in distress. The heroine of Susan, a girl named Catherine Morland, has read so many Gothic novels that she misinterprets the ordinary events of real life through their conventions. This work was eventually published (posthumously, in 1817) as Northanger Abbey. The Copyright Sale and Manuscript Limbo (1803–1816) In early 1803, a London publisher named Benjamin Crosby purchased the copyright to Susan for £10. However, Crosby never published the novel. For over a decade, Jane's manuscript languished unpublished. In 1816, when Jane had achieved some success with the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), she managed to repurchase the rights to Susan from Crosby. This episode illuminates the precarious position of female authors in this period. Jane could not force a publisher to bring her work into print, even though she owned the copyright. She had to negotiate its return and was forced to wait years for the work to finally appear. She substantially revised Susan before its posthumous publication in 1817 as Northanger Abbey, updating references and refining the text. <extrainfo> The fact that Jane paid money to repurchase her own work demonstrates her commitment to her writing and her belief that Susan deserved to be published. For an unmarried woman of limited means, this represented a significant financial investment in her literary career. </extrainfo> Summary: Formation of a Writer By 1798, Jane Austen had completed the essential formation of her literary style and voice. She had written the manuscripts of three novels that would eventually become her most famous works. She had moved from short parodies and burlesques aimed at family amusement to full-length novels that grappled seriously with character, plot, and theme. Her particular genius—combining keen social observation with sharp satirical wit, creating heroines who were intelligent and flawed rather than merely virtuous, and developing narratives that were both emotionally engaging and intellectually sophisticated—was already evident. The next phase of her life would involve the struggle to get these works published and continuing to develop her craft through further revision.