Jane Austen

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After her father’s death in January 1805, Jane, her mother, her sister Cassandra, and family friend Martha Lloyd, moved first to Clifton, and then, in autumn 1806, to Southampton where they remained for several years. In 1809, they took up residence at Chawton House, a small cottage on the property of her brother Richard’s estate. If you visit the house today (it is now a museum dedicated to her memory), you can still see the tiny tripod table in the dining- room where she revised her first three novels, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, and composed the remaining three: Mansfield Park, started in February 1811 and finished in June 1813; Emma, started in January 1814 and finished in March 1815; and Persuasion, started in August 1815 and finished in August 1816.

While at Chawton, Jane and her family lived in relative solitude. They relied mostly on one another for company, rather than seeking out society in local families as they had done while at Steventon. Jane’s niece Caroline remarked that they were ‘on friendly but rather distant terms with all.’ Jane’s brothers often visited the four women at Chawton: Henry from London; James from Steventon, where he had taken over his father’s post as rector; Francis and Charles from their ships when they were on leave; and Edward from his house at Godmersham.

Jane lived at Chawton until her declining health made it necessary for her and Cassandra to move to Winchester (only 15 miles from Chawton), where she could be closer to expert medical care. She, Cassandra, and Martha Lloyd made the trip in May of 1817. Her condition, known today to have been Addison’s disease, left her in a continually degenerative state of health. She continued to write during this period, however, and Sanditon, the novel she was working on until her death, is a self-mocking treatment of the invalid state into which she could not prevent herself from slipping.

Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817 in the arms of her beloved sister Cassandra. She is buried in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral and only a simple plaque identifies her grave. Strangely, the stone makes no mention of the fact that Austen was a novelist, other than an oblique reference to the ‘extraordinary endowments of her mind.’ But, despite this modest resting place, Jane Austen has been immortalized by the body of work that survived her and continues to delight and entertain readers today, almost 200 years after her death.

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