Biographie de Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. The Austens were cultured but not at all rich, though one of Austen's brothers was adopted by a wealthy relative. Other brothers followed professional careers in the church, the Navy, and banking. With the exception of two brief periods away at school, Austen and her elder sister Cassandra, her closest friend and confidante, were educated at home.
Austen's earliest surviving work, written at Steventon while still in her teens, is dedicated to her family and close female friends. Between 1801 and 1809, her least productive period, Austen lived in Bath, where her father died in 1805, and in Southampton. In 1809, she moved with her mother, Cassandra, and their great friend Martha Lloyd to Chawton, Hampshire, her home until her death at Winchester in 1817.
During this time, Austen published four of her major novels : Sense and Sensibility (1811) ; Pride and Prejudice (1813) ; Mansfield Park (1814) ; and Emma (1816), visiting London regularly to oversee their publication. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously in 1818. John Mullan is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has previously edited editions of Daniel Defoe's Roxana (2008) and Samuel Johnson's The Lives ofthe Poets for Oxford World's Classics.
He is the author of What Matters in Jane Austen ? (Bloomsbury, 2012), Anonymity : A Secret History of English Literature (Faber & Faber, 2008), and Hom Novels Work (OUP, 2006).
