ENGLISH HOLIDAY HOMEWORK

*Prepare a power-point presentation on any of the

novelist or poet

JANE AUSTEN

Himani
XII-A
12
 INTRODUCTION
 Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist
known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and
comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's
plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of
favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels
of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the
transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of biting irony, along with
her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim
among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike
 LIFE

 Family
 Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December
1775. She was born a month later than her parents expected; her
father wrote of her arrival in a letter that her mother "certainly
expected to have been brought to bed a month ago". He added that
her arrival was particularly welcome as "a future companion to her
sister".
 Education
 In 1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be
educated by Mrs Ann Cawley who took them with her to Southampton
when she moved there later in the year. In the autumn both girls were sent
home when they caught typhus and Austen nearly died.Austen was from
then home educated, until she attended boarding school in Reading with
her sister from early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, ruled by
Mrs La Tournelle, who possessed a cork leg and a passion for theatre.
 HER CAREER

 Early manuscripts (1796–1798)

 After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length

novel Elinor and Marianne. Her sister remembered that it was read to
the family "before 1796" and was told through a series of letters.
Without surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know how
much of the original draft survived in the novel published
anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility
 FIRST BOOK
 At the time, married British women did not have the legal power to sign contracts,
and it was common for a woman wishing to publish to have a male relative represent
her to sign the contract.[ Like most women authors at the time, Austen had to publish
her books anonymously. At the time, the ideal roles for a woman were as wife and
mother, and writing for women was regarded at best as a secondary form of activity; a
woman who wished to be a full-time writer was felt to be degrading her femininity, so
books by women were usually published anonymously in order to maintain the conceit
that the female writer was only publishing as a sort of part-time job, and was not
seeking to become a "literacy lioness" (i.e a celebrity).
 ILLNESS AND DEATH

 Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816, but ignored the warning signs. By the
middle of that year, her decline was unmistakable, and she began a slow, irregular
deterioration. The majority of biographers rely on Dr. Vincent Cope's
1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison's disease,
although her final illness has also been described as resulting from Hodgkin's
lymphoma. When her uncle died and left his entire fortune to his wife, effectively
disinheriting his relatives, she suffered a relapse, writing, "I am ashamed to say that
the shock of my Uncle's Will brought on a relapse ... but a weak Body must excuse
weak Nerves".
 GENRE AND STYLE
 Austen's works critique the sentimental novels of the second half of the 18th
century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. The earliest
English novelists, Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, were followed by
the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Walter Scott, Horace
Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmith, whose style and genre
Austen rejected, returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of
Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic study of manners". In the mid-20th century,
literary critics F. R. Leavis and Ian Watt placed her in the tradition of Richardson
and Fielding; both believe that she used their tradition of "irony, realism and satire
to form an author superior to both".
 Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of
modern fiction — 'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of
watering places and circulating libraries'".Yet her rejection of these genres is
complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma.[ Similar to William
Wordsworth, who excoriated the modern frantic novel in the "Preface" to his Lyrical
Ballads (1800), Austen distances herself from escapist novels; the discipline and
innovation she demonstrates is similar to his, and she shows "that rhetorically less is
artistically more." She eschewed popular Gothic fiction, stories of terror in which a
heroine typically was stranded in a remote location, a castle or abbey (32 novels
between 1784 and 1818 contain the word "abbey" in their title).
 RECEPTION
 As Austen's works were published anonymously, they brought her little personal
renown. They were fashionable among opinion-makers, but were rarely reviewed. Most of
the reviews were short and on balance favourable, although superficial and cautious.]They
most often focused on the moral lessons of the novels. Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist
of the day, contributed one anonymously. Using the review as a platform to defend the
then-disreputable genre of the novel, he praised Austen's realism.The other important
early review was attributed to Richard Whately in 1821. However, Whately denied having
authored the review, which drew favourable comparisons between Austen and such
acknowledged greats as Homer and Shakespeare, and praised the dramatic qualities of her
narrative.
 ADAPTATIONS
 Austen's novels have resulted in sequels, prequels and adaptations of almost every type,
from soft-core pornography to fantasy. From the 19th century, her family members
published conclusions to her incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were over 100 printed
adaptations. The first dramatic adaptation of Austen was published in 1895, Rosina
Filippi's Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen: Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-
Room Performance, and Filippi was also responsible for the first professional stage
adaptation, The Bennets (1901).The first film adaptation was the 1940 MGM production
of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.[ BBC television
dramatisations since the 1970s have attempted to adhere meticulously to Austen's plots,
characterisations and settings
 LIST OF WORKS
 Novels
 Sense and Sensibility (1811)
 Pride and Prejudice (1813)
 Mansfield Park (1814)
 Emma (1815)
 Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
 Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
 Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)
 Unfinished fiction
 The Watsons (1804)
 Sanditon (1817)
 Other works
 Sir Charles Grandison (adapted play) (1793, 1800)[p]
 Plan of a Novel (1815)
 Poems (1796–1817)
 Prayers (1796–1817)
 Letters (1796–1817)]
FACTS
 SOME NOVEL S WRITTEN
BY HER:
 Love and Friendship is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. From the
age of eleven until she was eighteen, Austen wrote her tales in three notebooks.
These still exist, one in the Bodleian Library and the other two in the British Museum.
They contain, among other works, Love and Freindship, written when she was fourteen,
and The History of England, written when she was fifteen.
 Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel by Jane Austen. It charts
the emotional development of the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, who learns
the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference
between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in
the depiction of manners, education, marriage and money during
the Regency era in Britain.
 Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, published in
1811. It was published anonymously; By A Lady appears on the title
page where the author's name might have been. It tells the story of
the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16 /12) as
they come of age. They have an older, stingy half-brother, John, and a
younger sister, Margaret, 13.
 BIBLOGRAPHY

 This information has been taken from Wikipedia- the free

encylopedia, a well known browsing website and with the help of
Google , a certified browsing engine.