AUSTEN, Jane, English novelist: b. Steventon, Hampshire, 16 Dec. 1775; d. Win chester, 18 July 1817. Miss Austen was the daughter of the Rev. George Austen, rector of Steventon and Deane, and Leigh Austen, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Leigh and niece of Theophilus Leigh, for many years master of Balliol College, Oxford. Jane was the youngest of seven children, of whom others besides herself, particularly Admiral Francis William Austen, became distinguished. Until 1801 she lived at Steventon. Her life here was quiet, domestic and moderately studious. Much of her spare time she spent in writing, chiefly for her own amusement. In 1801 the family removed to Bath, whence Miss Austen made visits to Lyme, Southampton and other places in the south of England. Her father died in 1805, and in 1809 she settled at Chawton, in Hampshire, where she remained until within two months of. her death. In May 1817, after some months of ailing health, she went to Winchester for treatment, and there died in the following July.
Miss Austen began writing stories at an early age, and before 16 is said to have corn-.
posed good-humored nonsense. The first of her extant novels, 'Pride and Prejudice,' was written between October 1796 and August 1797. Before that she had written 'Eleanor and Marianne,' which, in 1797-98, she altered into the present 'Sense and Sensibility.' Her third novel, 'Northanger Abbey,' belongs to 1798. The first of these novels to be published was 'Sense and in 1811. Two years later 'Pride and Prejudice,' which had been re fused by a publisher in her father's lifetime, made its appearance. 'Northanger Abbey' had an even longer period of darkness; in 1803 it had been sold to a publisher for f10, but the publisher, after keeping it 10 years or more, sold it back to the family, by whom it was issued in 1818, the year after the author's death. In 1804, Miss Austen began 'The Watson%) but never finished it, and until 1811 apparently did comparatively little writing. Between that year and 1816, however, she wrote 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma' and (Persuasion,) published respectively in 1814, 1816 and 1818. There is also an unfinished story, 'Lady Susan.' The novels were not especially popular in the author's lifetime, though Scott and Macaulay (a little later) paid sincere and high tribute to their excellence. To-day they are regarded as among the best novels in the lan guage and are probably as widely read as those of any first-rate woman novelist in English. The reason for their high place appears to lie in Miss Austen's skill as a story-teller and a drawer of character. The people she deals with are chiefly from the higher middle classes in the English country, and she rarely goes above or below them. In a time, that of the Napoleonic wars, when there was every tempta tion to write battle stories and heroics, Miss. Austen kept her eye on the life that she knew, and had nothing to do with spectacular means of arousing interest. The aspect of the few
warriors and seamen who come into her pages is domestic rather than martial. Nor is there any very serious adventure of any sort; the worst that happens is an elopement, or when a heroine slips down stairs and is stunned. Her people are quite unintellectual and in no wise grand or heroic. On the whole, her material is less startling than that of any English novelist, but the picture which she gives is unsurpassed in the perfection of truth, humor and vivacity. As a story-teller, she has, in point of technical construction, no superior. Her plots are not elaborate and there is no conspicuous wealth of invention; in all her six novels the plot turns on an elopement or a hidden engagement; but, granting this, the construction of 'Pride and Prejudice,' 'Emma' and 'Mansfield Park) is not to be bettered. They are models of their class of story telling. As an artist in character drawing, Miss Austen has contributed to the gallery of familiar persons such figures as Miss Bates, Mr. Woodhouse, Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. •Nor ris and a number of others, all of whom arc brilliant, though occasionally exaggerated, creations. All her important characters are strongly individual, and are so firmly drawn that there is no tendency to confuse them as types or as persons.
'Pride and Prejudice' is usually regarded as the best of the novels in point of liveliness of style, neatness of structure and vigor of substance. This position would be disputed by admirers of the more intricate 'Emma' and the more intricate and gloomy 'Mansfield Park,' both of which probably surpass 'Pride and Prejudice) in maturity and variety of char acterization. 'Northanger Abbey' is less ambitious than either of the preceding; it is a very vivacious burlesque, with a charming moral. The other two novels, and Sensibility' and 'Persuasion,' are usually thought to be inferior. See PRIDE AND PREJU DICE; ARROW MAKER, TILE; EMMA ; MANSFIELD PARK.
Excellent editions of the novels of Jane Austen are easily to be had. The principal life is the Rev. J. E. Austen Leigh's 'Memoir of Jane Austen) (London 1870). There is also a life by Goldwin Smith in the 'Great Writers' series (New York 1890). The place of Jane Austen in literature is treated in such literary histories as Mrs. Oliphant's 'Literary History of the 19th Century' and W. L. Cross's 'The Development of the English Novel.' W. D. Howells, in 'The Heroines of English Novels' (1901) and 'Criticism and Fiction' (1891) pays very high tribute to Miss Austen as an artist and as a creator of char acter. Recent works are Constance Hill's 'Jane Austen : Her Home and Her Friends) (New York 1902) • Mitton, G. E., 'Jane Austen and Her Times' (London 1905); Austen-Leigh, 'Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters: A Family Record' (New York 1913) and Cornish, in (English Men of Letter Series' (New York 1913).