Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the most famous authors in the western canon (possibly helped along by a certain well-known Colin-Firth-diving-into-a-pond scene in the BBC Pride and Prejudice television serial adaptation). And our fascination isn't just with her works: it's with the woman herself. There are countless biographies, a museum, websites, and films: Miss Austen Regrets, Becoming Jane, and, I would argue, the 1999 Mansfield Park adaptation, wherein Fanny Price has more in common with her spirited author than with the rather prudish and timid heroine of the novel.
Jane Austen [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons But the irony of our obsession with Jane Austen the woman is that during her lifetime, her works were all published anonymously. Her first novel to be published, Sense and Sensibility, was simply 'By a Lady'. Her next published novel, Pride and Prejudice, was 'By the Author of Sense and Sensibility.
Childhood & Education
Jane Austen was born into a family of lower gentry in Hampshire, where her father was Rector of Steventon. 16 December 1775. She had seven siblings: six brothers (five older, one younger), and an older sister,…
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| # | Resource Title | Description | Contributor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Male memory, female subject: the case of Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft | Janet Todd gives the keynote lecture at the Silence in the Archives conference held at Wolfson… | Janet Todd |
| 2 | Lady Susan | ebook version of Lady Susan | |
| 3 | Love and Freindship | ebook version of Love and Freindship | |
| 4 | The Watsons | ebook version of The Watsons | |
| 5 | What's so great about Austen? Isn't she just bonnets and balls? | Some film and tv adaptations of Jane Austen's novels might give the impression that the stories are… | Sandie Byrne |
| 6 | What's so great about Austen? Isn't she just bonnets and balls? | Some film and tv adaptations of Jane Austen's novels might give the impression that the stories are… | Sandie Byrne |
| 7 | The real Jane Austen: A life in small things | Biographer Paula Byrne (Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the… | Paula Byrne |
| 8 | Language and History | Prof. Simon Horobin examines how the English language has changed over time, addressing such vexed… | Simon Horobin |
| 9 | Bennet family at home (image) | Illustration by Hugh Thomson to Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, ca. 1894. Depicts the… | |
| 10 | Pride and Prejudice title page | The title page of the Richard Bentley edition of of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the first… |