Jane Austen Collection – Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and sensibility, Persuasion

Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon on 16 December 1775, the seventh of Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra’s eight children. She began writing as a form of family entertainment, dabbling in burlesques, parodies and sketches before turning to fiction. The early drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey were written at Steventon Rectory in the 1790s. Jane and her elder sister, Cassandra, moved with their parents to Bath in 1801, when Reverend Austen retired. Following his death, the three women eventually returned to Hampshire, settling in Chawton. Here Austen completed the three works already in production, and also wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Four of her novels were published anonymously during her lifetime; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were posthumous publications, when her authorship was finally acknowledged. A seventh novel, Sanditon, was in its infancy at the time of her death, probably from Addison’s disease, on 18 July 1817. Austen, who never married, wrote about the manners and mores of country life. She recognized the narrowness of her canvas, but her brushstrokes were delightfully deft. “Three or four families in a country village,” she once said, “is the very thing to work on.”