Jane Austen

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Jane Austen• Jane Austen (1775 ～ 1817) was the first to write novels of

realism in the 19th century, though she spent most of her lifetime in the 18th century. Specifically, she was the writer of the two centuries and her works were the product in the crossing of the two centuries.

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Jane Austen• Jane Austen was born in a country clergyman's family in

Hampshire of Southern England in 1775 and remained single all her life. She was educated at home and her life was notable for its lack of events. She began to write at an early age but at first had difficulties in getting them published. Later on, when her works were really published, they were only published anonymously, partly because of the prejudice prevailing at the time against the writing of novels by a woman and partly because of her aversion to publicity and popularity.

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Jane Austen• Beginning to write at a quite early age, Jane Austen completed

many works, among which the major ones and the treasured possessions of the modern world are: Sense and Sensibility (1881), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1815, posthumously). Pride and Prejudice is the most widely read one.

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Jane Austen• Living a quiet life in the countryside, Austen chiefly wrote about the

small world she lived in, about the very narrow world of rural gentry and clergy, and there is no heroic passions nor astounding adventures in her novels. Therefore, she is regarded as the founder of the novel which deals with unimportant middle-class people. She is also notable for her extraordinary power of keen observation and penetrating analysis. The above mentioned six novels all depict the loves and marriages of the young people by using detailed description of ordinary conversations, walks, teas, picnics, drives, dances, journeys, visits and other common activities of her characters. Furthermore, Austen's novels are not devoid of satire or irony. Norhtanger Abbey is a gentle satire on the mystery tale of haunted castles, and Emma, perhaps her finest novel, displays her irony at its subtlest.

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Jane Austen• Jane Austen's novels brought something new to the readers at

the beginning of the 19th century, who had already got tired of the vulgar and boring Sentimental Novels and Gothic Novels, and showed the everyday life and pastoral living style of the British countryside gentry who were by then remained unaffected by the capitalist industrial revolution. In this sense, Austen's novels are transitional in the history of British novels.

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Jane Austen• Though unknown in her lifetime, Jane Austen received great

honour after her early death. Sir Walter Scott praised her work in the Quarterly Review in 1815 as such: “that young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain (=dogmatic manner in writing) I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!”

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