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"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." (Pride & Prejudice)

Walking in the Literary Footsteps of Jane Austen

Angelica
2006-04-05 12:28:33

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." (Pride & Prejudice)

Thanks to the number of Jane Austen novels adapted for film and television, many London-bound visitors will be tempted to make a detour to explore the area of southern England - from East Hampshire to Bath - where the author lived, wrote, and set her stories such as Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Emma and Sense and Sensibility to name a few. (During her lifetime, Jane’s books were published anonymously, bearing the legend, “By a Lady,” a common practice at that time.)

Born in 1775, at Steventon Rectory in the beautiful county of Hampshire, Jane was the seventh of eight children. Her father, the Rev. George Austen was a Church of England clergyman who, although not a wealthy man, had a respectable income and was “well connected.” He encouraged his two daughters in the habit of learning, and Jane and her older sister Cassandra, were sent to school in Oxford when Jane was only seven years old. The girls later studied at home, where from the age of 12, Jane avidly read the classics in her father’s extensive library. She also learned to play the piano, became accomplished at embroidery and gleaned some French and Italian. Always interested in writing and sketching, Jane was twelve when she first began writing but it was not until she was eighteen that she began her first major novel Sense and Sensibility which was her first published work. Her launch into the literary field was not an easy one. When Jane was twenty-two years old, her father offered Pride and Prejudice to a publisher who declined even to glance at the manuscript.

Cassandra was one of Jane's closest confidantes. When they had to be apart, the two devoted sisters kept in touch by writing to each other, exchanging over a hundred letters during their lifetime. Many letters recount Jane’s excitement at attending social ...

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