Jane Austen is a renowned British novelist, whose work has amassed a substantial following, though written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born in Steventon, England on December 16, 1775, Austen was the seventh child of Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh.
She came from a lower-middle class family; her father earned a respectable income but was certainly not considered rich, and her mother did not receive significant education. Austen herself did not obtain a great deal of education either, much like most women at the time. Though not financially strong, her family emphasized the importance of religious and educational principles, and Austen’s father also tutored young children, which “may have accentuated the expectation of erudition in the household,” and inspired her to pursue writing literature (“Jane Austen” 1). Austen was mostly self-taught, having received very little formal schooling during her early years. Most of her childhood education took place at a short-lived boarding school called Abbey School in Reading, back home in
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Austen extensively read the work of these authors and others as well, gaining ideas and inspiration for her own writing. She admired Ann Radcliffe’s gothicism and portrayal of vivid romance. A lot of the material in Northanger Abbey was influenced by Radcliffe and her work. Charlotte Lennox, as well, modeled for Northanger Abbey, portraying prose and drama. Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth incorporated satirical politics into their writing, which affected the way Austen herself also presented her ideas in her novels. Jane Austen was also a long-standing admirer of Samuel Richardson. She enjoyed an epistolary novel of his, and a lot of his work and his quotes have had a great influence on her writing during her teenage years. A significant portion of her ideas sprouted from the authors she followed and their styles and works. They have played a major role in her own styles and the genres she