{"id":4845,"date":"2016-02-15T17:29:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T13:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/?p=4845"},"modified":"2016-02-15T17:43:32","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T13:43:32","slug":"6-interesting-facts-about-jane-austen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/6-interesting-facts-about-jane-austen\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Interesting facts about Jane Austen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Austen: 6 Interesting Facts About the Beloved English Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here are\u00a0 some interesting highlights of Austen’s life, career, and literary impact.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Although she never married,<\/strong>Jane Austen<\/strong><\/a>did become engaged — for one night.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>She received and accepted a proposal of marriage on December 2, 1802, two weeks before her 27 birthday. Jane Austen changed her mind overnight, however, and refused the proposal the next morning. And, perhaps she changed her mind because she believed \u2013 as she later wrote to a niece considering a marriage of convenience \u2013 that \u201cnothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love.\u201d Fortunately for her readers, she chose to remain single and was able to focus on writing rather than running a household and raising children.<\/li>\n
  2. Jane Austen continued to imagine how the lives of her characters evolved long after she finished a novel.<\/strong>InA Memoir of Jane Austen<\/em>, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote, \u201cShe would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people.\u201d For example, Anne Steele, Lucy\u2019s silly and vulgar sister in\u00a0Sense and Sensibility<\/em>, did not catch Dr. Davies after all. And, after the close of\u00a0Pride and Prejudice<\/em>, Kitty Bennet eventually married a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary ended up with a clerk who worked for her Uncle Philips. Some of the most interesting revelations, however, related to\u00a0Emma<\/em>. Mr. Woodhouse not only survived Emma\u2019s marriage to Mr. Knightly, but also kept his daughter and son-in-law living at Hartfield for two years. Deirdre Le Faye has also noted in\u00a0Jane Austen: A Family Record<\/em>\u00a0that “According to a less well-known tradition, the delicate Jane Fairfax lived only another nine or ten years after her marriage to Frank Churchill.”<\/li>\n
  3. The surnames of a number of Austen\u2019s characters can be found within the prominent and wealthy Wentworth family of Yorkshire — which also happens to intersect with Jane Austen\u2019s own family tree.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Jane Austen took her writing very seriously<\/strong>. She began writing stories, plays and poetry when she was 12 years old. Most of her \u201cJuvenilia,\u201d as the material she wrote in her youth is called, was in the comic vein. She wrote a parody of textbook histories,The History of England<\/em>\u2026 by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian, when she was 16 years old. She also wrote parodies of the romantic novels of \u201csensibility\u201d that were popular in her day. Austen\u2019s family members read aloud and performed plays for each other, and she learned about writing from these activities and the comments her family made about her own efforts. By the age of 23, Austen had written first drafts of the novels that later became\u00a0Sense and Sensibility<\/em>,\u00a0Pride and Prejudice<\/em> and\u00a0Northanger Abbey<\/em>. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0From the letters she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, and other family members, one can see that Jane Austen was proud of her writing. She enjoyed discussing her latest work, sharing news about a novel\u2019s progress at the printer, and offering advice on the craft of writing to other aspiring authors in the family. She also carefully tracked comments made by family members and friends about\u00a0Mansfield Park<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Emma<\/em>\u00a0and referred to\u00a0Pride<\/em>\u00a0and Prejudice<\/em>\u00a0as her \u201cown darling child.\u201d Jane Austen continued writing throughout her adult life until just before she died in July of 1817.<\/li>\n
  5. Jane Austen\u2019s life was not limited to a sheltered country existence.<\/strong> On the surface, her life seems to have been quiet and secluded; she was born in a small country village and lived there for 25 years. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh publishedA Memoir of Jane Austen<\/em>\u00a0in 1869, which reinforced the image that she was a demure, quiet maiden aunt in the best Victorian tradition. However, she led a very active life with travel and social contacts of many types. Through her family and friends she learned a great deal about the world around her.<\/li>\n
  6. Men read Jane Austen, too.<\/strong>Jane Austen\u2019s novels are sometimes viewed as \u201cchick-lit\u201d romances, leading some men to think they wouldn\u2019t enjoy reading them. But, Jane Austen has always had male admirers. Her books are not just about romance; they have a serious instructional purpose clothed in novel form. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admitted to reading Austen\u2019s novels, andWinston Churchill<\/a>\u00a0credited her with helping him win World War II .Rudyard Kipling<\/a>\u00a0read Jane Austen aloud to his wife and daughter each evening in an effort to raise their spirits after his son, fighting in WWI, was reported missing and believed dead. And one of her male contemporaries, Sir Walter Scott, praised her writing in his journal: \u201cAlso read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen\u2019s very finely written novel of\u00a0Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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