Emma [antikvár]

Life Times About the Author Jane Austen was bom into a moderately wealthy family in 1775, during the reign of King Geoige III. Her family was typically laige as was customary at the time in order to counter the possibility of early death by producing many offspring. She had five older brothers, one older sister and a younger brother. Austen was bom in a small village in Hampshire, England, named Steventon, where she lived imtil 1800. She would read out her early attempts at novels to her family and refine and hone the words based on their response. In this way she completed first draft manuscripts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, although they were originally titled Elinor and Marriane and First Impressions respectively. She also wrote the manuscript for Northanger Abbey in this way, which was initially given the name Susan. In 1800 Austen's father, William George Austen, decided to move to the City of Bath. At that time, it was normal for unmarried daughters to live with their parents, so Austen found herself moving to a Georgian city, having previously known only a rural life. Despite her association with Bath, it seems that urban society did not really suit Austen, and her output as a writer fell away for the next few years, until she retumed to the countryside. Austen's father died in 1805, leaving the family financially insecure. Austen's mother, Cassandra, took Jane and her sister, Elizabeth Cassandra, to Southampton in 1806, where they were based with her brother Frank and his wife. Finally, in 1809, Austen's brother Edward offered the three of them a cottage in his grotmds at Chawton, another village in Hampshire. With new found security and a more settled lifestyle, Austen found herself able to write once more. By 1811 she had become a pubhshed novehst with Sense and Sensibility. There followed, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1815. At about this time Austen began to feel xmwell and suffered from v