So Jane Austen is one of the most
famous authors in English literature. But how much do you know about her life? Today, we're going to be talking
about a brief overview of the lifetime of Jane Austen. And this is going to be the first
part of a series of videos where I delve deeper into different
aspects of her life and her novels. Let me know in the comments down below,
which Jane Austen novel is your favorite. So Jane Austen was born in the country,
in rural Hampshire to be specific, to a Anglican rector named George
Austen and his wife Cassandra Leigh. She was the seventh of eight children. And the second girl. Her and her older sister, Cassandra,
became best friends their entire life. And she was very close
to her brothers as well. She was born at home in
the Steventon rectory. And after a few months of being breastfed
by her mother, she was sent off to live with a poor woman in the village for
the next year to 18 months of her life. So it was common at this point in history
for women to do this, to have another woman raise their child until they
started to be easier to manage at home. After she came back to the rectory as
a toddler, she lived with her family and a lot of other boys because her
father was running a boys school. So Jane Austen grew up surrounded not
only by her siblings, but also by a bunch of young lads learning from her father. Jane Austen's formal education was very
little, but that was common for this Era. She was mostly taught at
home how to read and write. And she had two different stints
at a girls school when she was about seven and 10 years old. Otherwise a lot of her education came
from just reading in her father's library. She was an extensive reader. And we see that through multiple
quotations and references to other authors in her works and her letters. The earliest writings we have from
her come from when she's 12 years old. And she has other books she wrote as
a teenager, which are quite hilarious. And again, going to talk about
those in a different video. And when she was an older teenager,
she started writing the first drafts of the books we know, and
we love today, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. She wrote Lady Susan
during this time as well. While she did live the majority of
her life in the rural country, when she was 25 years old, her parents
decided that they were tired of living the rural country, preacher life, and
they were going to retire to Bath. If you've ever read Jane Austen's
works or watch the movies based off of 'em, you know what Bath is. It is the sea side resort filled
with gouty, elderly gentlemen trying to get well and scandals
and all of that greatness. Well, Jane Austen was
thrown into Bath at 25. And then for pretty much, the
next 10 years, she was being knocked around different lodgings
in Bath, where her father died. They visited other sea side resorts,
and then she had to go and visit a lot of their relatives constantly. Because back then you just went and
stayed with people all the time. And of course Jane Austen never married. There is reports that she did
receive a marriage proposal one time, but turned it down. And of course, as the movie becoming Jane
made famous, she did have a flirtation with a young Irishman named Tom Lefroy. But of course, I'm going to
be talking about this whole topic in a separate video. So finally in 1809, her brother was able
to provide his mother and his two sisters, Jane and Cassandra, a house back in the
country again in the area of Chawton. And it was there that she finished
revising the works we know and love today. And she also wrote Mansfield Park, Emma
and Persuasion while at that house. But then sadly, an 1817, when she
was just barely in her forties, she began to feel very ill. The illness progressed rapidly. And by that summer she did pass away. Of course, there's all these
questions of what was this illness? What killed her? And honestly, we don't know. Doctors can read her symptoms,
which are usually very vague and not specific and try to guess. Some people think it's Addison's
disease while other people think that it was lymphoma. Whatever the case, in July 1817,
when she was in Winchester, hoping to see some doctors that might
possibly help, she did pass away. And she was buried in Winchester
Cathedral, where you can still visit her tomb today. So. Just very quick. Let's talk about what books she
wrote in order of their publishing. Of course we have Sense and Sensibility,
which is the story of the Dashwood girls and their attempts to find
love after their father died. And their brother pretty much left
them out in the cold financially. Then we have Pride and Prejudice. Which is of course the story of Darcy
and Elizabeth and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, trying to break them up. Next up is Mansfield Park, which is
the story of poor Fanny Price being brought up by her rich relatives
and all the drama that ensues there. Then we have Emma, which if you
haven't watched my review of Emma 2020 version, definitely go check that out. But it is the story of this rich young
lady trying to match make people. But it doesn't exactly turn
out how she imagines it will. Then her final two books that were
published after her death were Persuasion, which is the story of Anne
Elliot and her love from her youth. And wondering will she be able
to find love and/or rekindle that flame from the past? And then Northanger Abbey, which was
actually the very first book that Jane Austen sold for publication,
but the publisher did not publish it because he was clearly not very smart. By the way, the first person
who was offered Pride and Prejudice also turn that down. So all you writers out there, just
because someone turns you down doesn't mean it's not a great book as that
poor publisher that turned down Pride and Prejudice found out sadly. Anyway, Northanger Abbey tells a story
of Catherine Morland and her trip to Bath, and then Northanger Abbey. And possible murder... who knows? And finally recently we've been
seeing some of her lesser known works being adapted into movies,
such as Lady Susan, which is the basis for Love and Friendship. You want to know more
about Love and Friendship. Go check out my video, "Five classic
books that are nothing like their movies," because Love and Friendship
the movie is nothing like Lady Susan. But that's a whole other topic for a
different video that I already made. Go watch that. And then of course we have The
Watson's which is unfinished. But also, Sandition, which was the
last book that she was writing. But unfortunately had to stop
writing because she just got too sick to write anymore. And so it was left unfinished
because of her death. And of course that was recently
adapted into a popular miniseries. Now, here is a special note I
want to make on the book that Jane Austen did not write. Jane Austen did not write Jane Eyre. This is actually a hugely common
misconception that Jane Austen wrote Jane Eyre and I feel like
it's entirely based off the fact that both their names were Jane. But Jane was extremely common at the time. It was like a top 10 baby name practically
every year during this time period. So that's why they're both named
Jane otherwise there's no connection. Of course Jane Eyre was written and
published by Charlotte Bronte several decades after Jane Austen died. So you might be wondering
why Jane Austen even famous? She's this random girl from Hampshire
who knocked around Bath for a bit, wrote some novels, did not write Jane Eyre. Why are we talking about her? Basically, Jane Austen is so important
in the history of literature. She not only wrote profound works. She advanced the art form of
the novel in so many ways. We see social realism being
taken to a whole nother level. This is the first time I feel
like where you really see characters who are real people. A lot of other novels at this time, you
could tell they were characters in a book. Where in Jane Austen's books,
even during her lifetime, people would write to her and be like,
"Did you base this on my neighbor? Because I know this person in your book." And she hadn't, she just wrote
characters that were so realistic, which was such a huge deal. I feel like it's similar in classic art,
where you see that I like them drawing people, but they don't look like people. And then all of a sudden it hits
that one art period where all of a sudden the people they're drawing
finally look like real people. And you're like, "Oh, advancement there." And it's the same thing we
see in Jane Austen's writings. Also. She is a major comic writer. Jane Austen is hilarious. If you look at the first line of
Pride and Prejudice, it is, "It's a truth universally acknowledged that
a single man of possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife." She's making a joke that's
rather profound and incredibly true now just as much as then. Like if a guy moves into my congregation,
everyone's like, "Hey, this guy, he must be in want of a wife." And I'm like, "Nooooo." And then it'll come out that he
already has a wife or something. And I'm like, "People." Jane Austen knew what
she was talking about. Also, she's had a huge impact, of course,
we see on popular culture with movies, with the development of plot lines. Again, like I mentioned, in
my video, "Is reading classic literature a waste of time?" her plot lines are the basis that so
many other romances are based off today. So she has definitely profoundly changed,
I feel like, the way we also look at love. And on one random other note, I do
want to say, as we move into the series, which if you're interested in
learning more about all these different aspects of Jane Austen's life, please
subscribe to my channel where I talk about classic literature and history,
but I think it's important for us to remember that Jane Austen herself
was a real person with her own ideas. And a lot of what we know about her
as a person is extremely limited. After she died her sister and one
of her nieces did destroy a huge amount of her personal letters. And diaries, if she did keep one. And while a lot of historians are
like, "Oh, that's such a tragedy." I'm over here like, "Um, if I was famous
and I died, I wouldn't want a bunch of random people reading my diary and
all of my text message conversations." That would be weird and
an intrusion of privacy. But of course, because this happened and
we don't get to intrude on her privacy. We don't get to see a lot about her. So I feel like a lot of people,
when they do approach Jane Austen's life and what they do is they
have to draw a lot of inferences. And of course they're drawing
those from their own life. Jane Austen gets remodeled in the image
of readers and historians all the time. And so I just want to caution people that
when you do take in information about Jane Austen realize that a lot of it is
just people making assumptions about her. And so keep that in mind as
we move through these videos. So that has been a super brief
overview of Jane Austen's life. Let me know in the comments below,
which of her novels is your favorite. And if you're interested in learning more
about Jane Austen, classic literature or history, please subscribe to my
channel and keep having an Epic day. Cause you're awesome. Bye. Some people think it's Addison's
disease, which is where your adrenal glands do not produce enough... adrenal juice.
