Jane Austen's Biography

her journey

I’ll be talking about an English writer you all must know by the name: Jane Austen. She was born in December of 1775, in Steventon, England. She had five brothers and one sister, Jane’s closest member of the family.

All of them grew up in an environment where it was all about creativity and extensive reading that was encouraged mostly by their father, George Austen, a well-respected man just like their mother.

She started writing when she was eleven years old but started intensively at the age of fifteen. Initially, it was just excerpts that would become one of her today´s classics. Jane and Cassandra, her older sister, were sent to boarding schools but they had to leave because their parents couldn’t afford to pay it any longer.

People say she was a very smart woman who knew how to play the piano, to dance and to speak various languages. She used to attend church, socialise with her neighbours and pick up a book from her shelf to read it out loud in front of her family, one of these many books were written by her.

When she was 26 years old, she moved with her father, mother and sister. Four years later her father passed away which brought not only emotional consequences but also financial difficulties. 

They ended up moving from place to place, renting flats here and there. In the picture below, we can see the house where Jane lived with her family during her father’s last four years of life.

Around her thirty’s, Jane decided to publish her books. First, Sense and Sensibility, then Pride and Prejudice. Some people say she might have published them in order to earn money so they could live. We don’t know that, but one thing I know: Pride and Prejudice became the most read book she had ever written out of the six she wrote. Unfortunately, her father couldn’t have the opportunity to see it happening since he was the most supportive and incentive father and also Jane’s closest member of the family just like her sister.

At that time, these books were published anonymously since it wasn’t common to see women’s names in public.

Jane never got married, even though she got a proposal once; however, she ended up changing her mind the following day.

Three years after Pride and Prejudice’s publication, she got sick, a disease called Addison, unknown at that time, and died the next year in July of 1817. She was only 41 years old.

Still, two books were published one year after her death but she left one incomplete and three volumes written but never published, at least by her.

I can say she was a dedicated hard writer who was unfortunately truly recognised almost fifty years after her death. Jane Austen’s novels gain popularity and she is still nominated one of the greatest writers of all time.