7/8/2023 0 Comments Northanger abbey gutenberg![]() ![]() ![]() Although she began writing in childhood, her first novel was not published until 1811. The seventh of eight children, Jane was particularly close to her only sister Cassandra throughout her life. ![]() Jane Austen spent her childhood in the village of Steventon, where her father was the rector and her family active in village social life. ![]() The title of Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, suggests an age influenced by 18th-century rationalism and 19th-century Romanticism. The aristocracy viewed manners, living according to society’s strictures, as indicative of belonging to the coterie in a time when being ostracized by society was considered a fate worse than death. This era, dominated by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Industrial Revolution, juxtaposed world-changing political events and technological innovations with the ostentatious, consciously fashionable world of the Prince Regent and the aristocracy bound by strict rules of social behavior. Bouts of insanity, now believed to have been caused by an illness and made worse by physicians and virtual imprisonment, made George III incapable of ruling, leading to the regency of his son and heir apparent, George, later to become King George IV on his father’s death. In her novels, Jane Austen fashions the quintessential picture of Regency England, the period from 1811–1820 in which Prince George served as Prince Regent to his father King George III. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |