INTRODUCTION Jane Austen: An influential woman Thanks to her sharp wit and strong female characters, Jane Austen’s literature is still utterly relevant. Author Claire Harman asks – is she the most influential woman of the past 200 years? In 1811, a 35- year-old Hampshire spinster had her first book published anonymously: Sense And Sensibility, By A Lady. It got two brief, polite reviews, sold 500 copies and was swiftly forgotten. But 200 years later, everyone knows Jane Austen. She’s not just a writer, she’s a cult, a brand and a cultural touchstone. This marked the transition from obscurity to being one of this century and last’s most influential literary figures. It’s hard to believe her six short novels – yes, it really is just six – are still bought in their millions (because her work is out of copyright, there is no accurate estimate of how many). Austen’s influence and literary pulling-power can’t be over-estimated. She’s reached millions of people all over the world, not simply through the number of languages she’s been translated into (35 at the last count), but because there’s something in her work that readers connect with instantly. We read her because we feel she understands us – despite being born over two centuries ago. In many ways, her books are more in tune with our times and tastes than her own. In the first review she ever received, she was taken to task for a ‘want of newness’, but her books now seem markedly more original than anything else of the period. After all, have you read any Sir Walter Scott – a contemporary of Austen’s – who sold proportionally the same amount then as JK Rowling has today? Austen simply wasn’t loved by the reviewers of her time. In 1817, English author Maria Edgeworth found the plot of Emma dull, while another contemporary novelist, Mary Russell Mitford, thought the wit of Elizabeth Bennet showed an “entire want of taste”. So perhaps Austen was so ahead of her time, she couldn’t be completely understood by her contemporaries. Over the past decades we have loved the fact that Lizzie is always answering back (and is fine with making self-deprecating remarks, such as admitting that she began to love Mr Darcy when she first saw his enormous estate, Pemberley). Austen knew her characters went against the grain and that she was out of step with her times. “I am going to take a heroine whom nobody but myself will much like,” she said when setting out to write Emma. Of course, Austen’s books have surface appeal too. She is unparalleled at luring us into a fantasy world of bonnets and gossip – ‘literary comfort food’ as the author Lori Smith has called it. It’s a world where there are single men of good fortune like Mr Darcy round every corner, in possession of a stately home and in want of a wife. There’s something for everyone: a great plot, a happy ending (always), carriages, ballgowns and romance. Think about the best love scenes you’ve ever read – how many of them at least faintly echo the understated passion, or endless yearning, of Austen? She has a hold over how we see love, and our voracious appetite for it – nearly half of all paperbacks published now are romances, and Austen is the acknowledged mother of the genre. She took the age-old romance plot and gave it several twists, centralising the heroine’s point of view, tastes and desires. Guardian columnist Zoe Williams believes Austen’s greatest mainstream influence is “the heart wants what it wants idea where a person’s true love is more important than his or her social duties. In Jane Austen’s own century that actually would have been considered pretty abhorrent.” The earliest readers of Pride And Prejudice were surprised that such a clever book could have been written by a woman. It is, of course, the book from which Austen’s most famous line comes: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Playwright Richard Sheridan advised a friend to “buy it immediately” as it “was one of the cleverest things” he had ever read – high praise from a man of the Regency period. Austen seemed to know too much about everyone’s follies and was so worldly that nothing shocked her. It’s a form of knowing satire that has become a national trait: deliver your cynicism with a polite smile, keeping the tone ‘light, bright and sparkling’, as Austen herself aimed to do. That her characters were strong, witty women might have surprised those who knew Austen – she didn’t openly sympathise with radical contemporaries such as Mary Wollstonecraft, the British writer and advocate of women’s rights. Austen’s feminism is more subtle, but she was still one of the first authors to suggest that women should marry for love, and not increased social standing or money. She gave her female characters the right to be happy too – a right we now take for granted, but certainly was not a given in Regency England. Persuasion, her last finished novel, is so bold as to suggest that happiness lies in a woman’s courage to act upon her passion. In fact, her novels all deal with the choices involved in being a woman – although she refuses to discriminate between characters on grounds of gender, and serves up fools on a plate, regardless of their sex. She saved her most searing critique not for male idiocy, but the forces behind it – morals, property, money. And it worked. She has always been widely read by men and been praised for her rationality. This was also her approach to the political and class system of the time, which was rigid and very biased towards men – using her romantic novels as a mouthpiece for social commentary. Fielding and other authors like her have also benefited from Austen in a subtler way: thanks to her, the novel is perceived as an art form women excel at. She put so much more than a love story into her books: she modernised the novel almost single-handedly – streamlining plot, cutting down physical description, adding realistic dialogue. Her volumes still regularly appear in top 10 must-read lists and her most famous work, Pride And Prejudice, was voted The Book The Nation Can’t Do Without in The Guardian in 2007 (the Bible came sixth). From wit to women’s rights, romance to morals, there really is no denying Austen’s life and her literature’s power are still relevant well into the 21st centur She also highlighted that women couldn’t inherit wealth – leaving many destitute on their husbands’ deaths. It’s a very dark subject, and one which many female novelists of the time shied away from. And her female characters are always reading, always educated, always well-versed in literature. Fielding and other authors like her have also benefited from Austen in a subtler way: thanks to her, the novel is perceived as an art form women excel at. She put so much more than a love story into her books: she modernised the novel almost single-handedly – streamlining plot, cutting down physical description, adding realistic dialogue. Her volumes still regularly appear in top 10 must-read lists and her most famous work, Pride And Prejudice, was voted The Book The Nation Can’t Do Without in The Guardian in 2007 (the Bible came sixth). From wit to women’s rights, romance to morals, there really is no denying Austen’s life and her literature’s power are still relevant well into the 21st century. Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. QUOTE “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” —Jane Austen Synopsis Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. While not widely known in her own time, Austen's comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism. Early Life The seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen, Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Jane's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Jane was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. The children also authored and put on plays and charades. Over the span of her life, Jane would become especially close to her father and older sister, Cassandra. Indeed, she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work. In order to acquire a more formal education, Jane and Cassandra were sent to boarding schools during Jane's pre-adolescence. During this time, Jane and her sister caught typhus, with Jane nearly succumbing to the illness. After a short period of formal education cut short by financial constraints, they returned home and lived with the family from that time forward. Literary Works Ever fascinated by the world of stories, Jane began to write in bound notebooks.