In 1797, First Impressions/Pride and Prejudice was offered to a publisher by Jane Austen's father, but the publisher declined to even look at the manuscript. Lady Susan was also probably written during this period. They were originally written for the amusement of her family, and most of the pieces are dedicated to one or another of her relatives or family friends.Įarlier versions of the novels eventually published as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey were all begun and worked on from 1795 to 1799 (at this early period, their working titles were Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions, and Susan respectively).

Jane Austen wrote her Juvenilia from 1787 to 1793 they include many humorous parodies of the literature of the day, such as Love and Freindship, and are collected in three manuscript volumes. (See also the diagram of Jane Austen's literary influences). The three novels that she praised in her famous 'Defense of the Novel' in Northanger Abbey were Burney's Cecilia and Camilla, and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda. She later got the title for Pride and Prejudice from a phrase in Burney's Cecilia, and when Burney's Camilla came out in 1796, one of the subscribers was 'Miss J. She frequently reread Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, and also enjoyed the novels of Fanny Burney (a.k.a. However decorous she later chose to be in her own novels, she was very familiar with eighteenth century novels, such as those of Fielding and Richardson, which were much less inhibited than those of the later (near-)Victorian era. Jane Austen did a fair amount of reading, of both the serious and the popular literature of the day (her father had a library of 500 books by 1801, and she wrote that she and her family were 'great novel readers, and not ashamed of being so'). Within their family, the two girls learned drawing, to play the piano, etc. (Jane was considered almost too young to benefit from the school, but their mother is reported to have said that 'if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too'.) This was Jane Austen's only education outside her family. In 1785-1786 Jane and Cassandra went to the Abbey boarding school in Reading, which apparently bore some resemblance to Mrs. They were brought home after an infectious disease broke out in Southampton. Cawley (the sister of one of their uncles), who lived first in Oxford and then moved to Southampton. In 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra went briefly to be taught by a Mrs. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827 She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter of the Rev. Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England (near Basingstoke).

Cecilia burney novel