Emma

- By Jane Austen
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English novelist (1775–1817) Jane AustenPortrait, c. 1810[a]Born(1775-12-16)16 December 1775Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, EnglandDied18 July 1817(1817-07-18) (aged 41)Winchester, Hampshire, EnglandResting placeWinchester Cathedral, HampshirePeriod1787–1817RelativesFamily and ancestrySignature Jane Austen (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːstɪn/ OST-in, AW-stin; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.[2][b] Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars. The anonymously published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), were a modest success but brought her little fame in her lifetime. She wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1817—and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and the unfinished novel The Watsons. Since her death Austen's novels have rarely been out of print. A significant transition in her reputation occurred in 1833, when they were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series (illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering and sold as a set). They gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience. Her work has inspired a large number of critical essays and has been included in many literary anthologies. Her novels have also inspired many films, including 1940's Pride and Prejudice, 1995's Sense and Sensibility and 2016's Love & Friendship. Biographical sources[edit] Last page of letter from Austen to her sister, Cassandra, 11 June 1799 The scant biographical information about Austen comes from her few surviving letters and sketches her family members wrote about her.[4] Only about 160 of the approximately 3,000 letters Austen wrote have survived and been published. Cassandra Austen destroyed the bulk of the letters she received from her sister, burning or otherwise destroying them. She wanted to ensure that the "younger nieces did not read any of Jane's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours or family members".[5] In the interest of protecting reputations from Jane's penchant for honesty and forthrightness, Cassandra omitted details of illnesses, unhappiness and anything she considered unsavoury.[6] Important details about the Austen family were elided by intention, such as any mention of Austen's brother George, whose undiagnosed developmental challenges led the family to send him away from home; the two brothers sent away to the navy at an early age; or wealthy Aunt Leigh-Perrot, arrested and tried on charges of larceny.[7] The first Austen biography was Henry Thomas Austen's 1818 "Biographical Notice". It appeared in a posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey and included extracts from two letters, against the judgement of other family members. Details of Austen's life continued to be omitted or embellished in her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and in William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh's biography Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, published in 1913, all of which included additional letters.[8] Austen's family and relatives built a legend of "good quiet Aunt Jane", portraying her as a woman in a happy domestic situation, whose family was the mainstay of her life. Modern biographers include details excised from the letters and family biographies, but the biographer Jan Fergus writes that the challenge is to keep the view balanced, not to present her languishing in periods of deep unhappiness as "an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family".[4] Life[edit] For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Jane Austen. Family[edit] Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775 in a harsh winter. Her father wrote of her arrival in a letter that her mother "certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago". He added that the newborn infant was "a present plaything for Cassy and a future companion".[9] The winter of 1776 was particularly harsh and it was not until 5 April that she was baptised at the local church with the single name Jane.[9] Church of St Nicholas in Steventon, as depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen[10] George Austen (1731–1805), served as the rector of the Anglican parishes of Steventon and Deane.[11][c] The Reverend Austen came from an old and wealthy family of wool merchants. As each generation of eldest sons received inheritances, George's branch of the family fell into poverty. He and his two sisters were orphaned as children, and had to be taken in by relatives. In 1745, at the age of fifteen, George Austen's sister Philadelphia was apprenticed to a milliner in Covent Garden.[13] At the age of sixteen, George entered St John's College, Oxford,[14] where he most likely met Cassandra Leigh (1739–1827).[15] She came from the prominent Leigh family. Her father was rector at All Souls College, Oxford, where she grew up among the gentry. Her eldest brother James inherited a fortune and large estate from his great-aunt Perrot, with the only condition that he change his name to Leigh-Perrot.[16] George Austen and Cassandra Leigh were engaged, probably around 1763, when they exchanged miniatures.[17] He received the living of the Steventon parish from Thomas Knight, the wealthy husband of his second cousin.[18] They married on 26 April 1764 at St Swithin's Church in Bath, by license, in a simple ceremony, two months after Cassandra's father died.[19] Their income was modest, with George's small per annum living; Cassandra brought to the marriage the expectation of a small inheritance at the time of her mother's death.[20] After the living at the nearby Deane rectory had been purchased for George by his wealthy uncle Francis Austen,[21] the Austens took up temporary residence there, until Steventon rectory, a 16th-century house in disrepair, underwent necessary renovations. Cassandra gave birth to three children while living at Deane: James in 1765, George in 1766, and Edward in 1767.[22] Her custom was to keep an infant at home for several months and then place it with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman living nearby to nurse and raise for twelve to eighteen months.[23] Steventon[edit] Steventon parsonage, as depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen, was in a valley and surrounded by meadows.[10] In 1768, the family finally took up residence in Steventon. Henry was the first child to be born there, in 1771.[24] At about this time, Cassandra could no longer ignore the signs that little George was developmentally disabled. He was subject to seizures, may have been deaf and mute, and she chose to send him out to be fostered.[25] In 1773, Cassandra was born, followed by Francis in 1774, and Jane in 1775.[26] According to biographer Park Honan, the atmosphere of the Austen home was an "open, amused, easy intellectual" one, where the ideas of those with whom the Austens might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed.[27] The family relied on the patronage of their kin and hosted visits from numerous family members.[28] Mrs Austen spent the summer of 1770 in London with George's sister, Philadelphia, and her daughter Eliza, accompanied by his other sister, Mrs Walter and her daughter Philly.[29][d] Philadelphia and Eliza Hancock were, according to Le Faye, "the bright comets flashing into an otherwise placid solar system of clerical life in rural Hampshire, and the news of their foreign travels and fashionable London life, together with their sudden descents upon the Steventon household in between times, all helped to widen Jane's youthful horizon and influence her later life and works."[30] Cassandra Austen's cousin Thomas Leigh visited a number of times in the 1770s and 1780s, inviting young Cassie to visit them in Bath in 1781. The first mention of Jane occurs in family documents upon her return, "... and almost home they were when they met Jane & Charles, the two little ones of the family, who had to go as far as New Down to meet the chaise, & have the pleasure of riding home in it."[31] Le Faye writes that "Mr Austen's predictions for his younger daughter were fully justified. Never were sisters more to each other than Cassandra and Jane; while in a particularly affectionate family, there seems to have been a special link between Cassandra and Edward on the one hand, and between Henry and Jane on the other."[32] From 1773 until 1796, George Austen supplemented his income by farming and by teaching three or four boys at a time, who boarded at his home.[33] The Reverend Austen had an annual income of £200 (equivalent to £27,000 in 2021) from his two livings.[34] This was a very modest income at the time; by comparison, a skilled worker like a blacksmith or a carpenter could make about £100 annually while the typical annual income of a gentry family was between £1,000 and £5,000.[34] Mr. Austen also rented the 200-acre Cheesedown farm from his benefactor Thomas Knight which could make a profit of £300 (equivalent to £41,000 in 2021) a year.[35] During this period of her life, Jane Austen attended church regularly, socialised with friends and neighbours,[e] and read novels—often of her own composition—aloud to her family in the evenings. Socialising with the neighbours often meant dancing, either impromptu in someone's home after supper or at the balls held regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall.[36] Her brother Henry later said that "Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it".[37] Education[edit] Silhouette of Cassandra Austen, Jane's sister and closest friend In 1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs Ann Cawley who took them to Southampton later that year. That autumn both girls were sent home after catching typhus, from which Jane Austen nearly died.[38] She was from then home-educated, until she attended boarding school with her sister from early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, ruled by Mrs La Tournelle.[39] The curriculum probably included French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music and drama. The sisters returned home before December 1786 because the school fees for the two girls were too high for the Austen family.[40] After 1786, Austen "never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family environment".[41] Her education came from reading, guided by her father and brothers James and Henry.[42] Irene Collins said that Austen "used some of the same school books as the boys".[43] Austen apparently had unfettered access both to her father's library and that of a family friend, Warren Hastings. Together these collections amounted to a large and varied library. Her father was also tolerant of Austen's sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.[44] Private theatricals were an essential part of Austen's education. From her early childhood, the family and friends staged a series of plays in the rectory barn, including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) and David Garrick's Bon Ton. Austen's eldest brother James wrote the prologues and epilogues and she probably joined in these activities, first as a spectator and later as a participant.[45] Most of the plays were comedies, which suggests how Austen's satirical gifts were cultivated.[46] At the age of 12, she tried her own hand at dramatic writing; she wrote three short plays during her teenage years.[47] Juvenilia (1787–1793)[edit] From at least the time she was aged eleven, Austen wrote poems and stories to amuse herself and her family.[48] She exaggerated mundane details of daily life and parodied common plot devices in "stories [] full of anarchic fantasies of female power, licence, illicit behaviour, and general high spirits", according to Janet Todd.[49] Containing work written between 1787 and 1793, the juvenilia (or childhood writings) that Austen compiled fair copies consisted of twenty-nine early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the Juvenilia.[50] She called the three notebooks "Volume the First", "Volume the Second" and "Volume the Third", and they preserve 90,000 words she wrote during those years.[51] The Juvenilia are often, according to scholar Richard Jenkyns, "boisterous" and "anarchic"; he compares them to the work of 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne.[52] Portrait of Henry IV. Declaredly written by "a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian", The History of England was illustrated by Austen's sister, Cassandra (c. 1790). Among these works is a satirical novel in letters titled Love and Freindship [sic], written when aged fourteen in 1790,[53] in which she mocked popular novels of sensibility.[54] The next year, she wrote The History of England, a manuscript of thirty-four pages accompanied by thirteen watercolour miniatures by her sister, Cassandra. Austen's History parodied popular historical writing, particularly Oliver Goldsmith's History of England (1764).[55] Honan speculates that not long after writing Love and Freindship, Austen decided to "write for profit, to make stories her central effort", that is, to become a professional writer. When she was around eighteen years old, Austen began to write longer, more sophisticated works.[56] In August 1792, aged seventeen, Austen started Catharine or the Bower, which presaged her mature work, especially Northanger Abbey, but was left unfinished until picked up in Lady Susan, which Todd describes as less prefiguring than Catharine.[57] A year later she began, but abandoned, a short play, later titled Sir Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a comedy in 6 acts, which she returned to and completed around 1800. This was a short parody of various school textbook abridgements of Austen's favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), by Samuel Richardson.[58] External videos Presentation by Claire Tomalin on Jane Austen: A Life, 23 November 1997, C-SPAN When Austen became an aunt for the first time aged eighteen, she sent new-born niece Fanny Catherine Austen Knight "five short pieces of ... the Juvenilia now known collectively as 'Scraps' .., purporting to be her 'Opinions and Admonitions on the conduct of Young Women'". For Jane-Anna-Elizabeth Austen (also born in 1793), her aunt wrote "two more 'Miscellanious [sic] Morsels', dedicating them to [Anna] on 2 June 1793, 'convinced that if you seriously attend to them, You will derive from them very important Instructions, with regard to your Conduct in Life.'"[59] There is manuscript evidence that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as 1811 (when she was 36), and that her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814.[60] Between 1793 and 1795 (aged eighteen to twenty), Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.[61] It is unlike any of Austen's other works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin describes the novella's heroine as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse her lovers, friends and family. Tomalin writes: Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration ... It stands alone in Austen's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.[62] According to Janet Todd, the model for the title character may have been Eliza de Feuillide, who inspired Austen with stories of her glamorous life and various adventures. Eliza's French husband was guillotined in 1794; she married Jane's brother Henry Austen in 1797.[28] Tom Lefroy[edit] Thomas Langlois Lefroy, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, by W. H. Mote (1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted that he had been in love with Austen: "It was boyish love."[63] When Austen was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a neighbour, visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London for training as a barrister. Lefroy and Austen would have been introduced at a ball or other neighbourhood social gathering, and it is clear from Austen's letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together: "I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together."[64] Austen wrote in her first surviving letter to her sister Cassandra that Lefroy was a "very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man".[65] Five days later in another letter, Austen wrote that she expected an "offer" from her "friend" and that "I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat", going on to write "I will confide myself in the future to Mr Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't give a sixpence" and refuse all others.[65] The next day, Austen wrote: "The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea".[65] Halperin cautioned that Austen often satirised popular sentimental romantic fiction in her letters, and some of the statements about Lefroy may have been ironic. However, it is clear that Austen was genuinely attracted to Lefroy and subsequently none of her other suitors ever quite measured up to him.[65] The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical as both Lefroy and Austen must have known. Neither had any money, and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again.[66] In November 1798, Lefroy was still on Austen's mind as she wrote to her sister she had tea with one of his relatives, wanted desperately to ask about him, but could not bring herself to raise the subject.[67] Early manuscripts (1796–1798)[edit] After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length novel Elinor and Marianne. Her sister remembered that it was read to the family "before 1796" and was told through a series of letters. Without surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.[68] Austen began a second novel, First Impressions (later published as Pride and Prejudice), in 1796. She completed the initial draft in August 1797, aged 21; as with all of her novels, Austen read the work aloud to her family as she was working on it and it became an "established favourite".[69] At this time, her father made the first attempt to publish one of her novels. In November 1797, George Austen wrote to Thomas Cadell, an established publisher in London, to ask if he would consider publishing First Impressions. Cadell returned Mr. Austen's letter, marking it "Declined by Return of Post". Austen may not have known of her father's efforts.[70] Following the completion of First Impressions, Austen returned to Elinor and Marianne and from November 1797 until mid-1798, revised it heavily; she eliminated the epistolary format in favour of third-person narration and produced something close to Sense and Sensibility.[71] In 1797, Austen met her cousin (and future sister-in-law), Eliza de Feuillide, a French aristocrat whose first husband the Comte de Feuillide had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry Austen.[72] The description of the execution of the Comte de Feuillide related by his widow left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.[72] During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third novel with the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the popular Gothic novel.[73] Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen offered Susan to Benjamin Crosby, a London publisher, who paid £10 for the copyright. Crosby promised early publication and went so far as to advertise the book publicly as being "in the press", but did nothing more.[74] The manuscript remained in Crosby's hands, unpublished, until Austen repurchased the copyright from him in 1816.[75] Bath and Southampton[edit] Austen's house, 4 Sydney Place, Bath, Somerset In December 1800, George Austen unexpectedly announced his decision to retire from the ministry, leave Steventon, and move the family to 4, Sydney Place in Bath, Somerset.[76] While retirement and travel were good for the elder Austens, Jane Austen was shocked to be told she was moving 50 miles (80 km) away from the only home she had ever known.[77] An indication of her state of mind is her lack of productivity as a writer during the time she lived in Bath. She was able to make some revisions to Susan, and she began and then abandoned a new novel, The Watsons, but there was nothing like the productivity of the years 1795–1799.[78] Tomalin suggests this reflects a deep depression disabling her as a writer, but Honan disagrees, arguing Austen wrote or revised her manuscripts throughout her creative life, except for a few months after her father died.[79][f] It is often claimed that Austen was unhappy in Bath, which caused her to lose interest in writing, but it is just as possible that Austen's social life in Bath prevented her from spending much time writing novels.[80] The critic Robert Irvine argued that if Austen spent more time writing novels when she was in the countryside, it might just have been because she had more spare time as opposed to being more happy in the countryside as is often argued.[80] Furthermore, Austen frequently both moved and travelled over southern England during this period, which was hardly a conducive environment for writing a long novel.[80] Austen sold the rights to publish Susan to a publisher Crosby & Company, who paid her £10 (equivalent to £860 in 2021).[81] The Crosby & Company advertised Susan, but never published it.[81] Austen was a regular visitor to her brother Edward's home, Godmersham Park in Kent, between 1798 and 1813. The house is regarded as an influence on her works.[82] The years from 1801 to 1804 are something of a blank space for Austen scholars as Cassandra destroyed all of her letters from her sister in this period for unknown reasons.[83] In December 1802, Austen received her only known proposal of marriage. She and her sister visited Alethea and Catherine Bigg, old friends who lived near Basingstoke. Their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently finished his education at Oxford and was also at home. Bigg-Wither proposed and Austen accepted. As described by Caroline Austen, Jane's niece, and Reginald Bigg-Wither, a descendant, Harris was not attractive—he was a large, plain-looking man who spoke little, stuttered when he did speak, was aggressive in conversation, and almost completely tactless. However, Austen had known him since both were young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to Austen and her family. He was the heir to extensive family estates located in the area where the sisters had grown up. With these resources, Austen could provide her parents a comfortable old age, give Cassandra a permanent home and, perhaps, assist her brothers in their careers. By the next morning, Austen realised she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance.[84] No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austen felt about this proposal.[85] Irvine described Bigg-Wither as somebody who "...seems to have been a man very hard to like, let alone love".[86] In 1814, Austen wrote a letter to her niece Fanny Knight, who had asked for advice about a serious relationship, telling her that "having written so much on one side of the question, I shall now turn around & entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection".[87] The English scholar Douglas Bush wrote that Austen had "had a very high ideal of the love that should unite a husband and wife ... All of her heroines ... know in proportion to their maturity, the meaning of ardent love".[88] A possible autobiographical element in Sense and Sensibility occurs when Elinor Dashwood contemplates "the worse and most irremediable of all evils, a connection for life" with an unsuitable man.[88][g] Watercolour of Jane Austen by her sister, Cassandra, 1804.[89] In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen started, but did not complete, her novel The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid and impoverished clergyman and his four unmarried daughters. Sutherland describes the novel as "a study in the harsh economic realities of dependent women's lives".[90] Honan suggests, and Tomalin agrees, that Austen chose to stop work on the novel after her father died on 21 January 1805 and her personal circumstances resembled those of her characters too closely for her comfort.[91] Her father's relatively sudden death left Jane, Cassandra, and their mother in a precarious financial situation. Edward, James, Henry, and Francis Austen (known as Frank) pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters.[92] For the next four years, the family's living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity. They spent part of the time in rented quarters in Bath before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon and Godmersham. They moved for the autumn months to the newly fashionable seaside resort of Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where they resided at Stanford Cottage.[h] It was here that Austen is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan and added its "Conclusion". In 1806, the family moved to Southampton, where they shared a house with Frank Austen and his new wife. A large part of this time they spent visiting various branches of the family.[93] On 5 April 1809, about three months before the family's move to Chawton, Austen wrote an angry letter to Richard Crosby, offering him a new manuscript of Susan if needed to secure the immediate publication of the novel, and requesting the return of the original so she could find another publisher. Crosby replied that he had not agreed to publish the book by any particular time, or at all, and that Austen could repurchase the manuscript for the £10 he had paid her and find another publisher. She did not have the resources to buy the copyright back at that time,[94] but was able to purchase it in 1816.[95] Chawton[edit] Cottage in Chawton, Hampshire where Austen lived during her last eight years of life, now Jane Austen's House Museum Around early 1809, Austen's brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled life—the use of a large cottage in Chawton village[i] which was part of the estate around Edward's nearby property Chawton House. Jane, Cassandra and their mother moved into Chawton cottage on 7 July 1809.[97] Life was quieter in Chawton than it had been since the family's move to Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialise with gentry and entertained only when family visited. Her niece Anna described the family's life in Chawton as "a very quiet life, according to our ideas, but they were great readers, and besides the housekeeping our aunts occupied themselves in working with the poor and in teaching some girl or boy to read or write."[98] Published author[edit] Further information: Styles and themes of Jane Austen Like many women authors at the time, Austen published her books anonymously.[99] At the time, the ideal roles for a woman were as wife and mother, and writing for women was regarded at best as a secondary form of activity; a woman who wished to be a full-time writer was felt to be degrading her femininity, so books by women were usually published anonymously in order to maintain the conceit that the female writer was only publishing as a sort of part-time job, and was not seeking to become a "literary lioness" (i.e. a celebrity).[100] During her time at Chawton, Austen published four generally well-received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which, like all of Austen's novels except Pride and Prejudice, was published "on commission", that is, at the author's financial risk. When publishing on commission, publishers would advance the costs of publication, repay themselves as books were sold and then charge a 10% commission for each book sold, paying the rest to the author. If a novel did not recover its costs through sales, the author was responsible for them.[101] The alternative to selling via commission was by selling the copyright, where an author received a one-time payment from the publisher for the manuscript, which occurred with Pride and Prejudice.[102] Austen's experience with Susan (the manuscript that became Northanger Abbey) where she sold the copyright to the publisher Crosby & Sons for £10, who did not publish the book, forcing her to buy back the copyright in order to get her work published, left Austen leery of this method of publishing.[99] The final alternative, of selling by subscription, where a group of people would agree to buy a book in advance, was not an option for Austen as only authors who were well known or had an influential aristocratic patron who would recommend an up-coming book to their friends, could sell by subscription.[102] Sense and Sensibility appeared in October 1811, and was described as being written "By a Lady".[99] As it was sold on commission, Egerton used expensive paper and set the price at 15 shillings (equivalent to £58 in 2021).[99] First edition title page from Sense and Sensibility, Austen's first published novel (1811) Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among young aristocratic opinion-makers;[103] the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen's novels were published in larger editions than was normal for this period. The small size of the novel-reading public and the large costs associated with hand production (particularly the cost of handmade paper) meant that most novels were published in editions of 500 copies or fewer to reduce the risks to the publisher and the novelist. Even some of the most successful titles during this period were issued in editions of not more than 750 or 800 copies and later reprinted if demand continued. Austen's novels were published in larger editions, ranging from about 750 copies of Sense and Sensibility to about 2,000 copies of Emma. It is not clear whether the decision to print more copies than usual of Austen's novels was driven by the publishers or the author. Since all but one of Austen's books were originally published "on commission", the risks of overproduction were largely hers (or Cassandra's after her death) and publishers may have been more willing to produce larger editions than was normal practice when their own funds were at risk. Editions of popular works of non-fiction were often much larger.[104] Austen made £140 (equivalent to £10,800 in 2021) from Sense and Sensibility,[105] which provided her with some financial and psychological independence.[106] After the success of Sense and Sensibility, all of Austen's subsequent books were billed as written "By the author of Sense and Sensibility" and Austen's name never appeared on her books during her lifetime.[99] Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice, a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. Austen sold the copyright to Pride and Prejudice to Egerton for £110 (equivalent to £7,600 in 2021).[99] To maximise profits, he used cheap paper and set the price at 18 shillings (equivalent to £62 in 2021).[99] He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, garnering three favourable reviews and selling well. Had Austen sold Pride and Prejudice on commission, she would have made a profit of £475, or twice her father's annual income.[99] By October 1813, Egerton was able to begin selling a second edition.[107] Mansfield Park was published by Egerton in May 1814. While Mansfield Park was ignored by reviewers, it was very popular with readers. All copies were sold within six months, and Austen's earnings on this novel were larger than for any of her other novels.[108] Without Austen's knowledge or approval, her novels were translated into French and published in cheaply produced, pirated editions in France.[109]: 1–2  The literary critic Noel King commented in 1953 that, given the prevailing rage in France at the time for lush romantic fantasies, it was remarkable that her novels with the emphasis on everyday English life had any sort of a market in France.[109]: 2  King cautioned that Austen's chief translator in France, Madame Isabelle de Montolieu, had only the most rudimentary knowledge of English, and her translations were more of "imitations" than translations proper, as Montolieu depended upon assistants to provide a summary, which she then translated into an embellished French that often radically altered Austen's plots and characters.[109]: 5–6  The first of the Austen novels to be published that credited her as the author was in France, when Persuasion was published in 1821 as La Famille Elliot ou L'Ancienne Inclination.[109]: 5  Austen learned that the Prince Regent admired her novels and kept a set at each of his residences.[j] In November 1815, the Prince Regent's librarian James Stanier Clarke invited Austen to visit the Prince's London residence and hinted Austen should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to the Prince. Though Austen disapproved of the Prince Regent, she could scarcely refuse the request.[111] Austen disapproved of the Prince Regent on the account of his womanising, gambling, drinking, spendthrift ways and generally disreputable behaviour.[112] She later wrote Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters, a satiric outline of the "perfect novel" based on the librarian's many suggestions for a future Austen novel.[113] Austen was greatly annoyed by Clarke's often pompous literary advice, and the Plan of a Novel parodying Clarke was intended as her revenge for all of the unwanted letters she had received from the royal librarian.[112] In mid-1815 Austen moved her work from Egerton to John Murray, a better known London publisher,[k] who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816. Emma sold well, but the new edition of Mansfield Park did poorly, and this failure offset most of the income from Emma. These were the last of Austen's novels to be published during her lifetime.[115] While Murray prepared Emma for publication, Austen began The Elliots, later published as Persuasion. She completed her first draft in July 1816. In addition, shortly after the publication of Emma, Henry Austen repurchased the copyright for Susan from Crosby. Austen was forced to postpone publishing either of these completed novels by family financial troubles. Henry Austen's bank failed in March 1816, depriving him of all of his assets, leaving him deeply in debt and costing Edward, James, and Frank Austen large sums. Henry and Frank could no longer afford the contributions they had made to support their mother and sisters.[116] Illness and death[edit] 8 College Street in Winchester where Austen lived her last days and died. Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816, but ignored the warning signs. By the middle of that year, her decline was unmistakable, and she began a slow, irregular deterioration.[117] The majority of biographers rely on Zachary Cope's 1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison's disease, although her final illness has also been described as resulting from Hodgkin's lymphoma.[118][l] When her uncle died and left his entire fortune to his wife, effectively disinheriting his relatives, she suffered a relapse, writing: "I am ashamed to say that the shock of my Uncle's Will brought on a relapse ... but a weak Body must excuse weak Nerves."[120] Austen continued to work in spite of her illness. Dissatisfied with the ending of The Elliots, she rewrote the final two chapters, which she finished on 6 August 1816.[m] In January 1817, Austen began The Brothers (titled Sanditon when published in 1925), completing twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably due to illness.[122] Todd describes Sanditon's heroine, Diana Parker, as an "energetic invalid". In the novel Austen mocked hypochondriacs, and although she describes the heroine as "bilious", five days after abandoning the novel she wrote of herself that she was turning "every wrong colour" and living "chiefly on the sofa".[120] She put down her pen on 18 March 1817, making a note of it.[120] Winchester Cathedral, where Austen is buried, and her memorial gravestone in the nave of the Cathedral Austen made light of her condition, describing it as "bile" and rheumatism. As her illness progressed, she experienced difficulty walking and lacked energy; by mid-April she was confined to bed. In May, Cassandra and Henry brought her to Winchester for treatment, by which time she suffered agonising pain and welcomed death.[120] Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 at the age of 41. Henry, through his clerical connections, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her brother James praises Austen's personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation and mentions the "extraordinary endowments of her mind", but does not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer.[123] Posthumous publication[edit] In the months after Austen's death in July 1817, Cassandra, Henry Austen and Murray arranged for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a set.[n] Henry Austen contributed a Biographical Note dated December 1817, which for the first time identified his sister as the author of the novels. Tomalin describes it as "a loving and polished eulogy".[125] Sales were good for a year—only 321 copies remained unsold at the end of 1818.[126] Although Austen's six novels were out of print in England in the 1820s, they were still being read through copies housed in private libraries and circulating libraries. Austen had early admirers. The first piece of fiction using her as a character (what might now be called real person fiction) appeared in 1823 in a letter to the editor in The Lady's Magazine.[127] It refers to Austen's genius and suggests that aspiring authors were envious of her powers.[128] In 1832, Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of her novels, and over the following winter published five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series. In October 1833, Bentley released the first collected edition of her works. Since then, Austen's novels have been continuously in print.[129] Genre and style[edit] Main article: Styles and themes of Jane Austen Austen's works implicitly critique the sentimental novels of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.[130][o] The earliest English novelists, Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, were followed by the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmith, whose style and genre Austen repudiated, returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic study of manners".[131] In the mid-20th century, literary critics F. R. Leavis and Ian Watt placed her in the tradition of Richardson and Fielding; both believe that she used their tradition of "irony, realism and satire to form an author superior to both".[132] Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction—'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'".[133] Yet her relationship with these genres is complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma.[133] Similar to William Wordsworth, who excoriated the modern frantic novel in the "Preface" to his Lyrical Ballads (1800), Austen distances herself from escapist novels; the discipline and innovation she demonstrates is similar to his, and she shows "that rhetorically less is artistically more."[133] She eschewed popular Gothic fiction, stories of terror in which a heroine typically was stranded in a remote location, a castle or abbey (32 novels between 1784 and 1818 contain the word "abbey" in their title). Yet in Northanger Abbey she alludes to the trope, with the heroine, Catherine, anticipating a move to a remote locale. Rather than full-scale rejection or parody, Austen transforms the genre, juxtaposing reality, with descriptions of elegant rooms and modern comforts, against the heroine's "novel-fueled" desires.[134] Nor does she completely denigrate Gothic fiction: instead she transforms settings and situations, such that the heroine is still imprisoned, yet her imprisonment is mundane and real—regulated manners and the strict rules of the ballroom.[135] In Sense and Sensibility Austen presents characters who are more complex than in staple sentimental fiction, according to critic Keymer, who notes that although it is a parody of popular sentimental fiction, "Marianne in her sentimental histrionics responds to the calculating world ... with a quite justifiable scream of female distress."[136] The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. It was a wretched business, indeed! Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for! Such a development of every thing most unwelcome! — example of free indirect speech, Jane Austen, Emma[137] Richardson's Pamela, the prototype for the sentimental novel, is a didactic love story with a happy ending, written at a time women were beginning to have the right to choose husbands and yet were restricted by social conventions.[138] Austen attempted Richardson's epistolary style, but found the flexibility of narrative more conducive to her realism, a realism in which each conversation and gesture carries a weight of significance. The narrative style utilises free indirect speech—she was the first English novelist to do so extensively—through which she had the ability to present a character's thoughts directly to the reader and yet still retain narrative control. The style allows an author to vary discourse between the narrator's voice and values and those of the characters.[139] Austen had a natural ear for speech and dialogue, according to scholar Mary Lascelles: "Few novelists can be more scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the phrasing and thoughts of their characters."[140] Techniques such as fragmentary speech suggest a character's traits and their tone; "syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary" is utilised to indicate social variants.[141] Dialogue reveals a character's mood—frustration, anger, happiness—each treated differently and often through varying patterns of sentence structures. When Elizabeth Bennet rejects Darcy, her stilted speech and the convoluted sentence structure reveals that he has wounded her:[142] From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that the groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. And I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.[143] Austen's plots highlight women's traditional dependence on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.[144] As an art form, the 18th-century novel lacked the seriousness of its equivalents from the 19th century, when novels were treated as "the natural vehicle for discussion and ventilation of what mattered in life".[145] Rather than delving too deeply into the psyche of her characters, Austen enjoys them and imbues them with humour, according to critic John Bayley. He believes that the well-spring of her wit and irony is her own attitude that comedy "is the saving grace of life".[146] Part of Austen's fame rests on the historical and literary significance that she was the first woman to write great comic novels. Samuel Johnson's influence is evident, in that she follows his advice to write "a representation of life as may excite mirth".[147] Her humour comes from her modesty and lack of superiority, allowing her most successful characters, such as Elizabeth Bennet, to transcend the trivialities of life, which the more foolish characters are overly absorbed in.[146] Austen used comedy to explore the individualism of women's lives and gender relations, and she appears to have used it to find the goodness in life, often fusing it with "ethical sensibility", creating artistic tension. Critic Robert Polhemus writes, "To appreciate the drama and achievement of Austen, we need to realize how deep was her passion for both reverence and ridicule ... and her comic imagination reveals both the harmonies and the telling contradictions of her mind and vision as she tries to reconcile her satirical bias with her sense of the good."[147] Reception[edit] Main articles: Reception history of Jane Austen, Janeite, and Jane Austen in popular culture Contemporaneous responses[edit] In 1816 the editors of The New Monthly Magazine noted Emma's publication, but chose not to review it.[K] As Austen's works were published anonymously, they brought her little personal renown. They were fashionable among opinion-makers, but were rarely reviewed.[103] Most of the reviews were short and on balance favourable, although superficial and cautious,[148][149] most often focused on the moral lessons of the novels.[150] Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist of the day, anonymously wrote a review of Emma in 1815, using it to defend the then-disreputable genre of the novel and praising Austen's realism, "the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes from an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him".[151] The other important early review was attributed to Richard Whately in 1821. However, Whately denied having authored the review, which drew favourable comparisons between Austen and such acknowledged greats as Homer and Shakespeare, and praised the dramatic qualities of her narrative. Scott and Whately set the tone for almost all subsequent 19th-century Austen criticism.[152] 19th century[edit] One of the first two published illustrations of Pride and Prejudice, from the Richard Bentley edition.[153] Caption reads: "She then told him [Mr Bennett] what Mr Darcy had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with astonishment." Because Austen's novels did not conform to Romantic and Victorian expectations that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated by an egregious display of sound and colour in the writing",[154] some 19th-century critics preferred the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.[155] Notwithstanding Walter Scott's positivity, Austen's work did not win over those who preferred the prevailing aesthetic values of the elite Romantic zeitgeist.[156] Her novels were republished in Britain from the 1830s and sold steadily.[157] Austen's six books were included in the canon-making Standard Novels series by publisher Richard Bentley, which increased their stature. That series referred to her as "the founder of a school of novelists" and called her a genius.[158] The first French critic who paid notice to Austen was Philarète Chasles in an 1842 essay, dismissing her in two sentences as a boring, imitative writer with no substance.[159] Austen was not widely appreciated in France until 1878,[159] when the French critic Léon Boucher published the essay Le Roman Classique en Angleterre, in which he called Austen a "genius", the first French author to do so.[160] The first accurate translation of Austen into French occurred in 1899 when Félix Fénéon translated Northanger Abbey as Catherine Morland.[160] In Britain and North America, Austen gradually grew in the estimation of both the public and the literati. In the United States, Austen was being recommended as reading in schools as early as 1838, according to Professor Devoney Looser.[161] Philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes published a series of enthusiastic articles in the 1840s and 1850s.[162] Later in the century, novelist Henry James referred to Austen several times with approval, and on one occasion ranked her with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry Fielding as among "the fine painters of life".[163] The publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced Austen's life story to a wider public as "dear aunt Jane", the respectable maiden aunt. Publication of the Memoir spurred another reissue of Austen's novels. Editions were released in 1883 and fancy illustrated editions and collectors' sets quickly followed.[164] Author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry". Around the start of the 20th century, an intellectual clique of Janeites reacted against the popularisation of Austen, distinguishing their deeper appreciation from the vulgar enthusiasm of the masses. In response, Henry James decried "a beguiled infatuation" with Austen, a rising tide of public interest that exceeded Austen's "intrinsic merit and interest".[165] The American literary critic A. Walton Litz noted that the "anti-Janites" in the 19th and 20th centuries comprised a formidable literary squad of Mark Twain, Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, D. H. Lawrence and Kingsley Amis, but in "every case the adverse judgement merely reveals the special limitations or eccentricities of the critic, leaving Jane Austen relatively untouched".[166] Modern[edit] Depiction of Austen from A Memoir of Jane Austen (1871) written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, and based on the sketch by Cassandra. All subsequent portraits of Austen are generally based on this, including on the reverse of the Bank of England £10 note introduced in September 2017. Austen's works have attracted legions of scholars. The first dissertation on Austen was published in 1883, by George Pellew, a student at Harvard University.[167] Another early academic analysis came from a 1911 essay by Oxford Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley,[168] who grouped Austen's novels into "early" and "late" works, a distinction still used by scholars today.[169] The first academic book devoted to Austen in France was Jane Austen by Paul and Kate Rague (1914), who set out to explain why French critics and readers should take Austen seriously.[160] The same year, Léonie Villard published Jane Austen, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres, originally her PhD thesis, the first serious academic study of Austen in France.[160] In 1923, R.W. Chapman published the first scholarly edition of Austen's collected works, which was also the first scholarly edition of any English novelist. The Chapman text has remained the basis for all subsequent published editions of Austen's works.[170] With the publication in 1939 of Mary Lascelles' Jane Austen and Her Art, the academic study of Austen took hold.[171] Lascelles analyzed the books Austen read and their influence on her work, and closely examined Austen's style and "narrative art". Concern arose that academics were obscuring the appreciation of Austen with increasingly esoteric theories, a debate that has continued since.[172] The period since World War II has seen a diversity of critical approaches to Austen, including feminist theory, and perhaps most controversially, postcolonial theory.[173] The divide has widened between the popular appreciation of Austen, particularly by modern Janeites, and academic judgements.[174] In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Austen among the greatest Western writers of all time.[175] In the People's Republic of China after 1949, writings of Austen were regarded as too frivolous,[176] and thus during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Austen was banned as a "British bourgeois imperialist".[177] In the late 1970s, when Austen's works was re-published in China, her popularity with readers confounded the authorities who had trouble understanding that people generally read books for enjoyment, not political edification.[178] In a typical modern debate, the conservative American professor Gene Koppel, to the indignation of his liberal literature students, mentioned that Austen and her family were "Tories of the deepest dye", i.e. Conservatives in opposition to the liberal Whigs. Although several feminist authors such as Claudia Johnson and Mollie Sandock claimed Austen for their own cause, Koppel argued that different people react to a work of literature in different subjective ways, as explained by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Thus competing interpretations of Austen's work can be equally valid, provided they are grounded in textual and historical analysis: it is equally possible to see Austen as a feminist critiquing Regency-era society and as a conservative upholding its values.[179] Adaptations[edit] Main article: Jane Austen in popular culture Austen's novels have resulted in sequels, prequels and adaptations of almost every type, from soft-core pornography to fantasy. From the 19th century, her family members published conclusions to her incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were over 100 printed adaptations.[180] The first dramatic adaptation of Austen was published in 1895, Rosina Filippi's Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen: Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-Room Performance, and Filippi was also responsible for the first professional stage adaptation, The Bennets (1901).[181] The first film adaptation was the 1940 MGM production of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.[182] BBC television dramatisations released in the 1970s and 1980s attempted to adhere meticulously to Austen's plots, characterisations and settings.[183] The British critic Robert Irvine noted that in American film adaptations of Austen's novels, starting with the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, class is subtly downplayed, and the society of Regency England depicted by Austen that is grounded in a hierarchy based upon the ownership of land and the antiquity of the family name is one that Americans cannot embrace in its entirety.[184] From 1995, many Austen adaptations appeared, with Ang Lee's film of Sense and Sensibility, for which screenwriter and star Emma Thompson won an Academy Award, and the BBC's immensely popular TV mini-series Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.[185] A 2005 British production of Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen,[186] was followed in 2007 by ITV's Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion,[187] and in 2016 by Love & Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan, a film version of Lady Susan, that borrowed the title of Austen's Love and Freindship [sic].[188] Honours[edit] Austen commemoration on the wall of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, London In 2013, Austen's works featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail to mark the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice.[189] Austen is on the £10 note issued by the Bank of England which was introduced in 2017, replacing Charles Darwin.[190][191] In July 2017, a statue of Jane Austen was erected in Basingstoke, Hampshire on the 200th anniversary of her death.[192] List of works[edit] NovelsSense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1816) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous) Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)Unfinished fictionThe Watsons (1804) Sanditon (1817)Other worksSir Charles Grandison (adapted play) (1793, 1800)[p] Plan of a Novel (1815) Poems (1796–1817) Prayers (1796–1817) Letters (1796–1817) Juvenilia—Volume the First (1787–1793)[q] Frederic & Elfrida Jack & Alice Edgar & Emma Henry and Eliza The Adventures of Mr. Harley Sir William Mountague Memoirs of Mr. Clifford The Beautifull Cassandra [sic] Amelia Webster The Visit The Mystery The Three Sisters A Fragment A beautiful description The generous Curate Ode to Pity Juvenilia—Volume the Second (1787–1793) Love and Freindship [sic] Lesley Castle The History of England A Collection of Letters The female philosopher The first Act of a Comedy A Letter from a Young Lady A Tour through Wales A Tale Juvenilia—Volume the Third (1787–1793) Evelyn Catharine, or The Bower Family trees[edit] Austen, her parents and her siblings Her siblings, nieces and nephews See also[edit] Novels portalLiterature portal Jane Austen's family and ancestry Notes[edit] ^ The original is unsigned but was believed by the family to have been made by Austen's sister Cassandra and remained in the family until 1920 with a signed sketch by Cassandra. The original sketch, according to relatives who knew Jane Austen well, was not a good likeness.[1] ^ Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and Sensibility "may well be the first English realistic novel" based on its detailed and accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting and spending" in an English gentry family.[3] ^ Irene Collins estimates that when George Austen took up his duties as rector in 1764, Steventon comprised no more than about thirty families.[12] ^ Philadelphia had returned from India in 1765 and taken up residence in London; when her husband returned to India to replenish their income, she stayed in England. He died in India in 1775, with Philadelphia unaware until the news reached her a year later, fortuitously as George and Cassandra were visiting. See Le Faye, 29–36 ^ For social conventions among the gentry generally, see Collins (1994), 105 ^ Doody agrees with Tomalin; see Doody, "Jane Austen, that disconcerting child", in Alexander and McMaster 2005, 105. ^ Elinor Dashwood's original quote from chapter 29, page 159, of Sense and Sensibility is: "the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man." ^ Austen's observations of early Worthing probably helped inspire her final, but unfinished novel, Sanditon, the story of an up-and-coming seaside resort in Sussex. ^ Chawton had a population of 417 at the census of 1811.[96] ^ The Prince Regent's admiration was by no means reciprocated. In a letter of 16 February 1813 to her friend Martha Lloyd, Austen says (referring to the Prince's wife, whom he treated notoriously badly) "I hate her Husband".[110] ^ John Murray also published the work of Walter Scott and Lord Byron. In a letter to Cassandra dated 17/18 October 1816, Austen comments that "Mr. Murray's Letter is come; he is a Rogue of course, but a civil one."[114] ^ Claire Tomalin prefers a diagnosis of a lymphoma such as Hodgkin's disease.[119] ^ The manuscript of the revised final chapters of Persuasion is the only surviving manuscript for any of her published novels in her own handwriting.[121] Cassandra and Henry Austen chose the final titles and the title page is dated 1818. ^ Honan points to "the odd fact that most of [Austen's] reviewers sound like Mr. Collins" as evidence that contemporary critics felt that works oriented toward the interests and concerns of women were intrinsically less important and less worthy of critical notice than works (mostly non-fiction) oriented towards men.[124] ^ Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and Sensibility "may well be the first English realistic novel" based on its detailed and accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting and spending" in an English gentry family.[3] ^ The full title of this short play is Sir Charles Grandison or The happy Man, a Comedy in 6 acts. For more information see Southam (1986), 187–189. ^ This list of the juvenilia is taken from The Works of Jane Austen. Vol VI. 1954. Ed. R.W. Chapman and B.C. Southam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, as supplemented by additional research reflected in Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray, eds. Catharine and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. References[edit] ^ Kirkham (2005), 68–72. ^ Grundy (2014), 195–197 ^ a b MacDonagh (1991), 65, 136–137. ^ a b Fergus (2005), 3–4 ^ Le Faye (2005), 33 ^ Nokes (1998), 1 ^ Nokes (1998), 1–2; Fergus (2005), 3–4 ^ Nokes (1998), 2–4; Fergus (2005), 3–4; Le Faye (2004), 279 ^ a b Le Faye (2004), 27 ^ a b Le Faye (2004), 20 ^ Todd (2015), 2 ^ Collins (1994), 86 ^ "Philadelphia Austen Hancock: Eliza de Feuillide's Mother". Geri Walton. 21 October 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2022. ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Austen, George (1)" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource. ^ Le Faye (2004), 3–5, 11 ^ Le Faye (2004), 8; Nokes (1998), 51 ^ Le Faye (2004), 11 ^ Le Faye (2004), 6 ^ Le Faye (2004), 11; Nokes (1998), 24, 26 ^ Le Faye (2004), 12; Nokes (1998), 24 ^ Austen-Leigh, James Edward (1871). Memoir of Jane Austen (Second ed.). London: Richard Bentley and Son. Archived from the original on 19 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019. ^ Le Faye (2004), 11, 18, 19; Nokes (1998), 36 ^ Le Faye (2004), 19 ^ Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 25 ^ Le Faye (2004), 22 ^ Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 24–27 ^ Honan (1987), 211–212 ^ a b Todd (2015), 4 ^ Nokes (1998), 39; Le Faye (2004), 22–23 ^ Le Faye (2004), 29 ^ Le Faye (2004), 46 ^ Le Faye (2004), 26 ^ Honan (1987), 14, 17–18; Collins (1994), 54. ^ a b Irvine (2005) p.2 ^ Lane (1995), 1. ^ Tomalin (1997), 101–103, 120–123, 144; Honan (1987), 119. ^ Quoted in Tomalin (1997), 102; see also Honan (1987), 84 ^ Le Faye (2004), 47–49; Collins (1994), 35, 133. ^ Todd (2015), 3 ^ Tomalin (1997), 9–10, 26, 33–38, 42–43; Le Faye (2004), 52; Collins (1994), 133–134 ^ Le Faye (2004), 52 ^ Grundy (2014), 192–193; Tomalin (1997), 28–29, 33–43, 66–67; Honan (1987), 31–34; Lascelles (1966), 7–8 ^ Collins (1994), 42 ^ Honan (1987), 66–68; Collins (1994), 43 ^ Le Faye (2014), xvi–xvii; Tucker (1986), 1–2; Byrne (2002), 1–39; Gay (2002), ix, 1; Tomalin (1997), 31–32, 40–42, 55–57, 62–63; Honan (1987), 35, 47–52, 423–424, n. 20. ^ Honan (1987), 53–54; Lascelles (1966), 106–107; Litz (1965), 14–17. ^ Tucker (1986), 2 ^ Le Faye (2004), 66; Litz (1986), 48; Honan (1987), 61–62, 70; Lascelles (1966), 4; Todd (2015), 4 ^ Todd (2015), 4–5 ^ "Jane Austen's juvenilia". British Library. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 26 August 2020. ^ Southam (1986), 244 ^ Jenkyns (2004), 31 ^ Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 252 ^ Litz (1965), 21; Tomalin (1997), 47; Honan (1987), 73–74; Southam (1986), 248–249 ^ Honan (1987), 75 ^ Honan (1987), 93 ^ Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 245, 253 ^ Southam (1986), 187–189 ^ Austen-Leigh, William; Austen-Leigh, Richard Arthur; Le Faye, Dierdre (1993). Jane Austen: A Family History. London: The British Library. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-0-7123-0312-5. ^ Sutherland (2005), 14; Doody (2014) 87–89 ^ Honan (1987), 101–102; Tomalin (1997), 82–83 ^ Tomalin (1997), 83–84; see also Sutherland (2005), 15 ^ Tomalin (1997), 118. ^ Quoted in Le Faye (2004), 92. ^ a b c d Halperin (1985), 721 ^ Le Faye (2014), xviii; Fergus (2005), 7–8; Tomalin (1997), 112–120, 159; Honan (1987), 105–111. ^ Halperin (1985), 722 ^ Sutherland (2005), 16–18; LeFaye (2014), xviii; Tomalin (1997), 107, 120, 154, 208. ^ Le Faye (2004), 100, 114. ^ Le Faye (2004), 104; Sutherland (2005), 17, 21; quotations from Tomalin (1997), 120–122. ^ Le Faye (2014), xviii–xiv; Fergus (2005), 7; Sutherland (2005), 16–18, 21; Tomalin (1997), 120–121; Honan (1987), 122–124. ^ a b King, Noel "Jane Austen in France" Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 1953 p. 2. ^ Litz (1965), 59–60. ^ Tomalin (1997), 182. ^ Le Faye (2014), xx–xxi, xxvi; Fergus (2005), 8–9; Sutherland (2005), 16, 18–19, 20–22; Tomalin (1997), 199, 254. ^ hubbard, susan. "Bath". seekingjaneausten.com. Archived from the original on 16 June 2019. Retrieved 27 May 2017. ^ Collins (1994), 8–9. ^ Sutherland (2005), 21. ^ Le Faye (2014) xx–xxii; Fergus (2005), 8; Sutherland (2005), 15, 20–22; Tomalin (1997), 168–175; Honan (1987), 215. ^ a b c Irvine, 2005 4. ^ a b Irvine, 2005 3. ^ "Godmersham, Jane Austen's second home". Press Reader. Retrieved 31 August 2020. ^ Halperin (1985), 729 ^ Le Faye (2014), xxi; Fergus (2005), 7–8; Tomalin (1997), 178–181; Honan (1987), 189–198. ^ Le Faye (2005), 51. ^ Irvine (2005), 3 ^ Letter dated 18–20 November 1814, in Le Faye (1995), 278–282. ^ a b Halperin (1985), 732 ^ Kirkham (2005), 68–72; Auerbach (2004), 19. ^ Sutherland (2005), 15, 21. ^ Le Faye (2014) xxii; Tomalin (1997), 182–184; Honan (1987), 203–205. ^ Honan (1987), 213–214. ^ Tomalin (1997), 194–206. ^ Tomalin (1997), 207. ^ Le Faye (2014), xx–xxi, xxvi; Fergus (2005), 8–9; Sutherland (2005), 16, 18–19, 20–22; Tomalin (1997), 182, 199, 254. ^ Collins (1994), 89. ^ Le Faye (2014), xxii; Tomalin (1997), 194–206; Honan (1987), 237–245; MacDonagh (1991), 49. ^ Grey, J. David; Litz, A. Waton; Southam, B. C.; Bok, H.Abigail (1986). The Jane Austen companion. Macmillan. p. 38. ISBN 9780025455405. ^ a b c d e f g h Irvine, 2005 15. ^ Irvine, 2005 10–15. ^ Fergus (2014), 6; Raven (2005), 198; Honan (1987), 285–286. ^ a b Irvine, 2005 13. ^ a b Honan (1987), 289–290. ^ For more information and a discussion of the economics of book publishing during this period, see Fergus (2014), 6–7, and Raven (2005), 196–203. ^ Irvine (2005) p.15 ^ Honan (1987), 290, Tomalin (1997), 218. ^ Sutherland (2005), 16–17, 21; Le Faye (2014) xxii–xxiii; Fergus (2014), 10–11; Tomalin (1997), 210–212, 216–220; Honan (1987), 287. ^ Le Faye (2014), xxiii; Fergus (1997), 22–24; Sutherland (2005), 18–19; Tomalin (1997), 236, 240–241, 315, n. 5. ^ a b c d King, Noel J. (1953). "Jane Austen in France". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 8 (1): 1–26. doi:10.2307/3044273. JSTOR 3044273. ^ Le Faye (1995), 207–208. ^ Austen letter to James Stannier Clarke, 15 November 1815; Clarke letter to Austen, 16 November 1815; Austen letter to John Murray, 23 November 1815, in Le Faye (1995), 296–298. ^ a b Halperin (1985), 734 ^ Litz (1965), 164–165; Honan (1987), 367–369, describes the episode in detail. ^ Honan (1987), 364–365; Le Faye (1995) 291. ^ Le Faye (2014), xxv–xxvi; Sutherland (2005), 16–21; Fergus (2014), 12–13, 16–17, n.29, 31, n.33; Fergus (2005), 10; Tomalin (1997), 256. ^ Le Faye (2014), xx, xxvi; Fergus (2014), 15; Tomalin (1997), 252–254. ^ Honan (1987), 378–379, 385–395 ^ For detailed information concerning the retrospective diagnosis, its uncertainties and related controversies, see Honan (1987), 391–392; Le Faye (2004), 236; Grey (1986), 282; Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body, 221. ^ Tomalin (1997), Appendix I, 283–284; see also A. Upfal, "Jane Austen's lifelong health problems and final illness: New evidence points to a fatal Hodgkin's disease and excludes the widely accepted Addison's", Medical Humanities, 31(1),| 2005, 3–11. doi:10.1136/jmh.2004.000193 ^ a b c d Todd (2015), 13 ^ Tomalin (1997), 255. ^ Tomalin (1997), 261. ^ Le Faye (2014), xxv–xxvi; Fergus (1997), 26–27; Tomalin (1997), 254–271; Honan (1987), 385–405. ^ Honan (1987), 317. ^ Tomalin (1997), 272. ^ Tomalin (1997), 321, n.1 and 3; Gilson (1986), 136–137. ^ Looser, Devoney (13 December 2019). "Fan fiction or fan fact? An unknown pen portrait of Jane Austen". TLS: 14–15. Archived from the original on 10 July 2022. ^ Looser, Devoney (13 December 2019). "Genius expressed in the nose - The earliest known piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan fiction". TLS. Archived from the original on 2 April 2022. ^ Gilson (1986), 137; Gilson (2005), 127; Southam (1986), 102. ^ Litz (1965), 3–14; Grundy (2014), 195–197; Waldron (2005), 83, 89–90; Duffy (1986), 93–94. ^ Grundy (2014), 196 ^ Todd (2015), 21 ^ a b c Keymer (2014), 21 ^ Keymer (2014), 24–25 ^ Keymer (2014), 29 ^ Keymer (2014), 32 ^ qtd. in Lodge (1986), 175 ^ Lodge (1986), 165 ^ Lodge (1986), 171–175 ^ Lascelles (1966) 101 ^ Lascelles (1966), 96, 101 ^ Baker (2014), 177 ^ qtd in Baker (2014), 177 ^ MacDonagh (1991), 66–75; Collins (1994), 160–161. ^ Bayley (1986), 24 ^ a b Bayley (1986), 25–26 ^ a b Polhemus (1986), 60 ^ Fergus (2014), 10; Honan (1987), 287–289, 316–317, 372–373. ^ Southam (1968), 1. ^ Waldron (2005), 83–91. ^ Scott (1968), 58; Waldron (2005), 86; Duffy (1986), 94–96. ^ Waldron (2005), 89–90; Duffy (1986), 97; Watt (1963), 4–5. ^ Gilson (2005), 127. ^ Duffy (1986), 98–99; MacDonagh (1991), 146; Watt (1963), 3–4. ^ Southam (1968), 1; Southam (1987), 2. ^ Litz, A. Walton "Recollecting Jane Austen" pp. 669–682 from Critical Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 3, March 1975 p. 672. ^ Johnson (2014), 232; Gilson (2005), 127. ^ Austen, Jane (1833). Sense and Sensibility: A Novel. London: Richard Bentley. p. xv. ^ a b King, Noel "Jane Austen in France" from Nineteenth-Century Fiction pp. 1–28, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 1953 p. 23. ^ a b c d King, Noel "Jane Austen in France" from Nineteenth-Century Fiction pp. 1–28, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 1953 p. 24. ^ Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-1421422824. ^ Southam (1968), 152; Southam (1987), 20–21. ^ Southam (1987), 70. ^ Southam (1987), 58–62. ^ Southam (1987), 46–47, 230 (for the quote from James); Johnson (2014), 234. ^ Litz, A. Walton "Recollecting Jane Austen" pp. 669–682 from Critical Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 3, March 1975 p. 670. ^ Devoney Looser, The Making of Jane Austen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 185–196. ^ Trott (2005), 92. ^ Southam (1987), 79. ^ Southam (1987), 99–100; see also Watt (1963), 10–11; Gilson (2005), 149–50; Johnson (2014), 239. ^ Southam (1987), 107–109, 124. ^ Southam (1986), 108; Watt (1963), 10–11; Stovel (2014), 248; Southam (1987), 127 ^ Said, Edward W. (1994). Culture and imperialism (1st Vintage books ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-75054-1. OCLC 29600508. ^ Rajan (2005), 101–110 ^ Bloom, Harold (1994). The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 2. ISBN 0-15-195747-9. ^ Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 210. ^ Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 212. ^ Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 213. ^ Koppel, Gene (2 November 1989). "Pride and Prejudice: Conservative or Liberal Novel—Or Both? (A Gadamerian Approach)". Retrieved 25 October 2016. ^ Lynch (2005), 160–162. ^ Devoney Looser, The Making of Jane Austen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 85. ^ Brownstein (2001), 13. ^ Troost (2007), 79. ^ Irvine, Robert Jane Austen, London: Routledge, 2005 pp. 158–159 ^ Troost (2007), 82–84. ^ Carol Kopp, "The Nominees: Keira Knightley", CBS News, 20 October 2008. ^ Julia Day, "ITV falls in love with Jane Austen", The Guardian, 10 November 2005. ^ Alonso Duralde, Alonso, "'Love & Friendship' Sundance Review: Whit Stillman Does Jane Austen—But Hasn't He Always?", The Wrap, 25 January 2016. ^ Press Association (21 February 2013). "Jane Austen stamps go on sale". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 September 2022. ^ "Jane Austen is now on Britain's 10 pound note". ABC News. 14 September 2017. Retrieved 4 December 2019. ^ Morris, Steven (18 July 2017). "Jane Austen banknote unveiled – with strange choice of quotation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. 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Le Faye, Deirdre. "Letters". Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6. 33–40 Le Faye, "Memoirs and Biographies". Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6. 51–58 Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Litz, A. Walton. "Chronology of Composition". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 47–62 Lodge, David. "Jane Austen's Novels: Form and Structure". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 165–179 Looser, Devoney. The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. ISBN 1-4214-2282-4. Lynch, Deirdre Shauna. "Sequels". Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6. 160–169 MacDonagh, Oliver. 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"Critical Responses, Recent". Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6. 101–10. Scott, Walter. "Walter Scott, an unsigned review of Emma, Quarterly Review". Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1812–1870. Ed. B.C. Southam. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. ISBN 0-7100-2942-X. 58–69. Southam, B.C. "Grandison". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 187–189 Southam, B.C. "Criticism, 1870–1940". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 102–109 Southam, B.C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1812–1870. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. ISBN 0-7100-2942-X. Southam, B.C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870–1940. Vol. 2. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. ISBN 0-7102-0189-3. Southam, B.C. "Juvenilia". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. 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Further reading[edit] Library resources about Jane Austen Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Jane Austen Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Gubar, Susan and Sandra Gilbert. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984 [1979]. ISBN 0-300-02596-3. External links[edit] Jane Austen at Wikipedia's sister projects Media from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata Works by Jane Austen at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Jane Austen at Internet Archive Works by Jane Austen at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition, a digital archive from the University of Oxford A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh Jane Austen Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine at the British Library Museums[edit] Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton The Jane Austen Centre in Bath Fan sites and societies[edit] The Republic of Pemberley The Jane Austen Society of Australia The Jane Austen Society of North America The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom vteJane Austen Timeline WorksMajor Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1816) Northanger Abbey (1818) Persuasion (1818) Minor Lady Susan The Watsons (unfinished) Sanditon (unfinished) Plan of a Novel Juvenilia Love and Freindship The Beautifull Cassandra The History of England Catharine, or The Bower Places Jane Austen Centre House Museum Chawton House (Library) Familyand people Rev. George Austen James Austen Edward Austen Knight Henry Thomas Austen Cassandra Austen Francis Austen Charles Austen Anna Austen Lefroy Thomas Langlois Lefroy Philadelphia Austen Hancock Eliza de Feuillide (née Hancock) Catherine Hubback Martha Lloyd Analysis Causes of death Janeite In popular culture Styles and themes Georgian society in Austen novels Reception history A Memoir of Jane Austen Portrayals Becoming Jane (2007 film) Miss Austen Regrets (2007 film) Category Associated subjects vteJane Austen's Pride and PrejudiceCharacters List of characters Bennet family Elizabeth Bennet Fitzwilliam Darcy William Collins Lady Catherine de Bourgh George Wickham Films Pride and Prejudice (1940) Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) Bride and Prejudice (2004) Pride & Prejudice (2005) Austenland (2013 film) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) Fire Island (2022) Television Elizabeth Refuses (1957) Pride and Prejudice (1958) Pride and Prejudice (1967) Pride and Prejudice (1980) Trishna (1985) Pride and Prejudice (1995) Will be Somewhere (2004) Lost in Austen (2008) Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) Novels Darcy's Story (1995) Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) Mr. Darcy's Daughters (2003) Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman An Assembly Such as This (2003) Duty and Desire (2004) These Three Remain (2005) Austenland (2007) Love, Lies and Lizzie (2009) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009 parody) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (2010 parody) Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) Longbourn (2013) Eligible (2016) Theatre First Impressions (1959 musical) Pride and Prejudice (1993 musical) Stolthet och fördom (2011 opera) Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) (2018 play) Other "Beyond a Joke" (1997) The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012 web series) Stride & Prejudice (2013 video game) See also Pride & Prejudice (2005 soundtrack) Pemberley List of literary adaptations vteJane Austen's Sense and SensibilityCharacters Elinor Dashwood Edward Ferrars Marianne Dashwood John Willoughby Colonel Brandon Films Sense and Sensibility (1995) Soundtrack List of accolades Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) From Prada to Nada (2011) Television Sense and Sensibility (1971) Sense and Sensibility (1981) Sense and Sensibility (2008) Novels The Secrets of Love (2005) Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) Others Kumkum Bhagya (2014) vteJane Austen's Mansfield ParkCharacters Fanny Price Edmund Bertram Mary Crawford Henry Crawford Tom Bertram Maria Bertram Mr. Rushworth Films Mansfield Park (1999) Mansfield Park (2007) Miniseries Mansfield Park (1983) Opera Mansfield Park (2011) vteJane Austen's EmmaCharacters Emma Woodhouse George Knightley Mr Woodhouse Mr Weston Miss Bates Films Clueless (1995) Emma (1996) Aisha (2010) Emma. (2020) Television Emma (1972) Clueless (1996) Emma (1996) Emma (2009) Other Emma Approved vteJane Austen's PersuasionCharacters Anne Elliot Frederick Wentworth Miniseries Persuasion (1960) Persuasion (1971) Films Persuasion (1995) Persuasion (2007) Persuasion (2022) vteJane Austen's Northanger AbbeyCharacters Catherine Morland Henry Tilney Films Northanger Abbey (1987) Northanger Abbey (2007) Literature Summer of Secrets Related The Mysteries of Udolpho vteUSC Scripter Awards – Film1980s Hugh Whitemore and Helene Hanff (1988) Frank Galati, Lawrence Kasdan, and Anne Tyler (1989) 1990s Steven Zaillian and Oliver Sacks (1990) Carol Sobieski and Fannie Flagg (1991) Richard Friedenberg and Norman Maclean (1992) Steven Zaillian and Thomas Keneally (1993) Frank Darabont and Stephen King (1994) Emma Thompson and Jane Austen (1995) Anthony Minghella and Michael Ondaatje (1996) Curtis Hanson, Brian Helgeland, and James Ellroy (1997) Steven Zaillian and Jonathan Harr (1998) Armyan Bernstein, Dan Gordon, Rubin Carter, Sam Chaiton, and Terry Swinton (1999) 2000s Steve Kloves and Michael Chabon (2000) Akiva Goldsman and Sylvia Nasar (2001) David Hare and Michael Cunningham (2002) Brian Helgeland and Dennis Lehane / Gary Ross and Laura Hillenbrand (2003) Paul Haggis and F.X. Toole (2004) Dan Futterman and Gerald Clarke (2005) David Arata, Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Timothy J. Sexton, and P. D. James (2006) Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, and Cormac McCarthy (2007) Simon Beaufoy and Vikas Swarup (2008) Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, and Walter Kirn (2009) 2010s Aaron Sorkin and Ben Mezrich (2010) Alexander Payne, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, and Kaui Hart Hemmings (2011) Chris Terrio, Antonio J. 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Emma

VOLUME I CHAPTER I
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.
Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.
The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.
Sorrow came-a gentle sorrow-but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness.-Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor's loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father and herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost.
The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness-the kindness, the affection of sixteen years-how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old-how she had devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health-and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed Isabella's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers-one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.
How was she to bear the change?-It was true that her friend was going only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the difference between a Mrs. Weston, only half a mile from them, and a Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful.
The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.
Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from Isabella and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house, and give her pleasant society again.
Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town, to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner,
"Poor Miss Taylor!-I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!" "I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves a good wife;-and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her own?"
"A house of her own!-But where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as large.-And you have never any odd humours, my dear." "How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!-We shall be always meeting! We must begin; we must go and pay wedding visit very soon."
"My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could not walk half so far." "No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure." "The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a little way;-and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our visit?"
"They are to be put into Mr. Weston's stable, papa. You know we have settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter's being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her-James is so obliged to you!"
"I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will be able to tell her how we all are."
Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards walked in and made it unnecessary.
Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly connected with it, as the elder brother of Isabella's husband. He lived about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome, and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after some days' absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated Mr. Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner, which always did him good; and his many inquiries after "poor Isabella" and her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr. Woodhouse gratefully observed, "It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley, to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have had a shocking walk."
"Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire." "But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not catch cold." "Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them."
"Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding."
"By the bye-I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you all behave? Who cried most?"
"Ah! poor Miss Taylor! 'Tis a sad business." "Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say 'poor Miss Taylor.' I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence!-At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two."
"Especially when one of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature!" said Emma playfully. "That is what you have in your head, I know-and what you would certainly say if my father were not by."
"I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed," said Mr. Woodhouse, with a sigh. "I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome." "My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean you, or suppose Mr. Knightley to mean you. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know-in a joke-it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another."
Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by every body.
"Emma knows I never flatter her," said Mr. Knightley, "but I meant no reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a gainer."
"Well," said Emma, willing to let it pass-"you want to hear about the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day."
"Dear Emma bears every thing so well," said her father. "But, Mr. Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am sure she will miss her more than she thinks for."
Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. "It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion," said Mr. Knightley. "We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor's time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor must be glad to have her so happily married."
"And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me," said Emma, "and a very considerable one-that I made the match myself. I made the match, you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may comfort me for any thing."
Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, "Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more matches."
"I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such success, you know!-Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here, always acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful-Mr. Weston need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr. Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it.
"Ever since the day-about four years ago-that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell's, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making."
"I do not understand what you mean by 'success,'" said Mr. Knightley. "Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, 'I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry her,' and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and that is all that can be said."
"And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?-I pity you.-I thought you cleverer-for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third-a something between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield enough to comprehend that."
"A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational, unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference."
"Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others," rejoined Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. "But, my dear, pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family circle grievously."
"Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr. Elton, papa,-I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him-and he has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him single any longer-and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I have of doing him a service."
"Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to meet him."
"With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time," said Mr. Knightley, laughing, "and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself."
CHAPTER II
Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family, which for the last two or three generations had been rising into gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged, and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by entering into the militia of his county, then embodied.
Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the chances of his military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was surprized, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and who were full of pride and importance, which the connexion would offend.
Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her fortune-though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate-was not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off with due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce much happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him; but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother's unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home. They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.
Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills, as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years' marriage, he was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain. From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his mother's, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young creature of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge of the little Frank soon after her decease. Some scruples and some reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the care and the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.
A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury, where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful occupation and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty years of his life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time, realised an easy competence-enough to secure the purchase of a little estate adjoining Highbury, which he had always longed for-enough to marry a woman as portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according to the wishes of his own friendly and social disposition.
It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth, it had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to; but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that, even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.
He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own; for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore, that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine young man had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was looked on as sufficiently belonging to the place to make his merits and prospects a kind of common concern.
Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit his father had been often talked of but never achieved.
Now, upon his father's marriage, it was very generally proposed, as a most proper attention, that the visit should take place. There was not a dissentient voice on the subject, either when Mrs. Perry drank tea with Mrs. and Miss Bates, or when Mrs. and Miss Bates returned the visit. Now was the time for Mr. Frank Churchill to come among them; and the hope strengthened when it was understood that he had written to his new mother on the occasion. For a few days, every morning visit in Highbury included some mention of the handsome letter Mrs. Weston had received. "I suppose you have heard of the handsome letter Mr. Frank Churchill has written to Mrs. Weston? I understand it was a very handsome letter, indeed. Mr. Woodhouse told me of it. Mr. Woodhouse saw the letter, and he says he never saw such a handsome letter in his life."
It was, indeed, a highly prized letter. Mrs. Weston had, of course, formed a very favourable idea of the young man; and such a pleasing attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense, and a most welcome addition to every source and every expression of congratulation which her marriage had already secured. She felt herself a most fortunate woman; and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate she might well be thought, where the only regret was for a partial separation from friends whose friendship for her had never cooled, and who could ill bear to part with her.
She knew that at times she must be missed; and could not think, without pain, of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui, from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and privations. And then there was such comfort in the very easy distance of Randalls from Hartfield, so convenient for even solitary female walking, and in Mr. Weston's disposition and circumstances, which would make the approaching season no hindrance to their spending half the evenings in the week together.
Her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to Mrs. Weston, and of moments only of regret; and her satisfaction-her more than satisfaction-her cheerful enjoyment, was so just and so apparent, that Emma, well as she knew her father, was sometimes taken by surprize at his being still able to pity 'poor Miss Taylor,' when they left her at Randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort, or saw her go away in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her own. But never did she go without Mr. Woodhouse's giving a gentle sigh, and saying, "Ah, poor Miss Taylor! She would be very glad to stay."
There was no recovering Miss Taylor-nor much likelihood of ceasing to pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse. The compliments of his neighbours were over; he was no longer teased by being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different from himself. What was unwholesome to him he regarded as unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it. He had been at the pains of consulting Mr. Perry, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr. Perry was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one of the comforts of Mr. Woodhouse's life; and upon being applied to, he could not but acknowledge (though it seemed rather against the bias of inclination) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with many-perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an opinion, in confirmation of his own, Mr. Woodhouse hoped to influence every visitor of the newly married pair; but still the cake was eaten; and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.
There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston's wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr. Woodhouse would never believe it.

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Word Lists:

Unexceptionable : not open to objection

Companionable : (of a person) friendly and sociable

Dissuade : persuade (someone) not to take a particular course of action

Governess : a woman employed to teach children in a private household.

Gentility : social superiority as demonstrated by genteel manners, behavior, or appearances

Indisposed : slightly unwell

Fanciful : (of a person or their thoughts and ideas) overimaginative and unrealistic

Tacitly : in a way that is understood or implied without being directly stated

Disparity : a great difference

Ennui : a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement

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Additional Information:

Rating: B Words in the Passage: 5135 Unique Words: 1,133 Sentences: 326
Noun: 1368 Conjunction: 520 Adverb: 383 Interjection: 15
Adjective: 375 Pronoun: 604 Verb: 915 Preposition: 571
Letter Count: 21,690 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Neutral (Slightly Conversational) Difficult Words: 682
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