119 Fun Facts About Jane Austen

In which English county was Jane Austen born in December 1775?

Hampshire: she was born in the village of Steventon and lived there until she was 25, drafting the first versions of three of her novels before the family moved away.

What was the occupation of Jane Austen's father, George Austen?

Anglican rector: George Austen topped up a modest clerical income by farming and by taking in three or four boys at a time as boarding pupils.

Austen's father and two of her brothers all studied at which university?

Oxford: at St John's College her eldest brother James launched a humorous weekly, The Loiterer, kept it going for over a year, and in later life spoke slightingly of it.

Which sibling was Jane Austen's only sister and lifelong closest companion?

Cassandra burned most of Jane's letters to her in old age and left the rest to relations; the family put it down to a dread of publicity, though scholars still debate why.

Which disease nearly killed the young Jane Austen in 1783 at school in Southampton?

Typhus swept through Southampton that autumn: both sisters caught it and were fetched home, and Jane, who nearly died, was taught at home for more than a year afterwards.

Which young Irish visitor flirted with the 20-year-old Austen in 1795-96, as recorded in her earliest letters?

Tom Lefroy was sent away by his family at the end of January 1796, since neither of them had money to marry on, and she never saw him again; the 2007 film Becoming Jane is built on the episode.

The Irish law student Austen flirted with in her early twenties went on to hold which high office?

Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1852, he refused to step down until he was 90, and in old age he told a nephew he had been in love with Austen, though he called it a 'boyish love'.

Whose December 1802 marriage proposal did Austen accept, then withdraw from the next morning?

Harris Bigg-Wither, six years her junior, was heir to large estates near her childhood home; the match would have secured her family's future, and she still thought better of it overnight.

In 1801 the Austen family left Steventon and moved to which fashionable city?

Bath: her father retired there suddenly, and his death in 1805 left his widow and daughters so short of money that her brothers clubbed together to support them.

Which brother offered Austen's mother and sisters the Chawton cottage in 1809?

Edward had been adopted by wealthy, childless cousins, the Knights, and inherited their estates, later taking their surname; the cottage stood on his Chawton estate.

Austen's brothers Francis and Charles both made their careers in which service?

The Royal Navy made admirals of both brothers; Francis, a flag-captain in Nelson's fleet, was sent off on supply and convoy duty in autumn 1805 and so missed Trafalgar.

In Pride and Prejudice, which pompous clergyman proposes to Elizabeth Bennet and, once refused, to her friend Charlotte Lucas?

Mr Collins makes what Elizabeth calls 'two offers of marriage within three days'; Charlotte accepts because, as she says, she is 'not romantic' and asks 'only a comfortable home'.

In Emma, which young man flirts with the heroine while secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax?

Frank Churchill dashes off to London 'merely to have his hair cut'; soon afterwards a pianoforte arrives for Jane from a nameless giver, and he later owns up to ordering it.

Instead of Austen's name, what appeared on the title page of Sense and Sensibility in 1811?

By a Lady: her sister wrote to relatives begging them not to mention who the lady was, and each later novel was credited only to the author of the earlier ones.

Which 1996 novel borrows its plot from Pride and Prejudice, right down to a hero called Mark Darcy?

Bridget Jones's Diary grew out of Helen Fielding's newspaper column; the 1995 BBC serial inspired her hero, and its Mr Darcy, Colin Firth, went on to play Mark Darcy on film.

In 1815 Austen moved from Egerton to which better-known London publisher, who brought out Emma?

John Murray, who was also Lord Byron's publisher, brought out Emma, and it sold well, but her losses on his second edition of Mansfield Park ate up most of the profit.

Emma was dedicated, after a heavy hint from court, to which royal whom Austen privately disliked?

The Prince Regent kept a set of her novels in each of his residences; she had written 'I hate her husband' when taking his wife's side in 1813, but the hint was hard to refuse.

Austen told a court librarian she could write which kind of book only 'to save my life'?

A historical romance on the House of Saxe-Coburg was James Stanier Clarke's idea; she said she would be hung before finishing chapter one if she could never laugh, then spoofed his hints in Plan of a Novel.

Which famous writer anonymously reviewed Emma, praising Austen's art of copying from nature?

Sir Walter Scott wrote the unsigned Quarterly Review piece; Austen had earlier joked that he had 'no business to write novels, especially good ones', having fame and profit enough as a poet.

Which illness do most biographers, following a 1964 diagnosis, blame for Austen's death at 41?

Addison's disease is a diagnosis made 147 years after the event, and Hodgkin's lymphoma has been argued since; she herself made light of it all as bile and rheumatism.

Where was Austen buried after her death in July 1817, aged 41?

Winchester Cathedral: she had moved into lodgings in College Street, a short walk away, to be near her doctor, and died there eight weeks later with her sister beside her.

Austen's gravestone never mentions her novels, but praises 'the extraordinary endowments' of her what?

Mind is as close as the stone comes to her books. A brass tablet added later finally called her 'known to many by her writings'.

Whose Biographical Notice, published with her last two novels in 1817, first publicly named Austen as author?

Her brother Henry had long been her go-between with publishers; a militia officer turned banker, he saw his bank fail in 1816 and afterwards took holy orders.

Austen likened her own writing to painting with a fine brush on a little bit, 'two inches wide', of what?

Ivory was what miniature portraits were painted on; in an 1816 letter she set her 'little bit' against a nephew's 'strong, manly' sketches and joked that it produced 'little effect after much labour'.

Under what working title did Austen originally write the novel that became Pride and Prejudice?

First Impressions was offered to a London publisher by her father in November 1797, sight unseen; the proposal was declined by return of post, and the book waited until 1813.

Sense and Sensibility began life as an epistolary novel under which working title?

Elinor and Marianne was told in letters and read aloud to the family; how it worked is a puzzle, since in the finished novel the two sisters are never apart for a single day.

In Persuasion, whose advice led the 19-year-old Anne Elliot to break off her first engagement?

Lady Russell, a second mother to Anne, thought a young man with 'nothing but himself to recommend him' a throwing away; Anne gave way and paid with more than seven years of lost bloom and spirits.

Which unfinished Austen novel, begun in 1817 as The Brothers, is set in a would-be health resort?

Sanditon runs to twelve chapters, written between January and mid-March 1817; she filled it with comic hypochondriacs while her own health was failing, and in 2019 the fragment was spun out into a TV drama.

In Pride and Prejudice, which haughty aunt of Mr Darcy descends on Elizabeth to demand she promise never to marry him?

Lady Catherine's visit backfires: Elizabeth refuses to promise, and when the aunt reports this to her nephew it is exactly what, in his words, 'taught me to hope'.

Which relative published the 1869 memoir that created the image of dear aunt Jane?

Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh had been the youngest mourner at her funeral; over fifty years on, in old age, he gathered his own and his sisters' memories before the last people who knew her were gone.

Which writer's story 'The Janeites' follows First World War gunners bound together by a secret love of Austen?

Rudyard Kipling's sole surviving gunner swears by her: 'there's no one to touch Jane when you're in a tight place'. The critic George Saintsbury had coined 'Janeite' in 1894 as a badge of honour.

Since 2017 Austen's portrait has appeared on which Bank of England banknote?

£10 notes gained her after a 2013 outcry: replacing Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill would have left no woman but the Queen on the Bank's notes, and her selection was announced that July.

Whose portrait did Austen's replace on a Bank of England banknote in 2017?

Charles Darwin was a devoted reader of hers: his son recalled that her novels, read aloud to him at home, were 'read and re-read till they could be read no more'.

Which Pride and Prejudice character, feigning interest in her book, utters Austen's banknote quote, 'there is no enjoyment like reading'?

Caroline Bingley chose her book only because it was the second volume of the one Mr Darcy was reading; moments after the line she yawns, throws it aside and looks round the room for amusement.

Which Austen novel is a satire of Gothic fiction that revived interest in seven forgotten horrid novels?

Northanger Abbey lists seven 'horrid' novels that readers long assumed Austen had made up; all seven were real, and her own father borrowed one, The Midnight Bell, from a library in 1798.

The heroine of Austen's Gothic send-up longs to know what lies behind the black veil in which real novel?

The Mysteries of Udolpho so fills her head that, as a house guest, she suspects her host of murdering his wife, and is mortified when his son guesses what she has been thinking.

Emma is set in which fictional Surrey village?

Highbury is home to a heroine Austen expected few to warm to: a family memoir has her saying, as she began, 'I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.'

During an excursion to which scenic spot does Emma Woodhouse thoughtlessly mock the talkative Miss Bates?

Box Hill is where Emma limits Miss Bates to 'only three' dull remarks; Mr Knightley's 'It was badly done, indeed!' leaves her in tears almost all the way home, and she calls on Miss Bates the next morning.

Ten-year-old Fanny Price is sent to Mansfield Park from her impoverished family home in which naval town?

Portsmouth is where Sir Thomas sends her back years later, hoping a taste of want will teach her the value of a rich suitor's offer; she still refuses him, but decides 'Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield was home'.

In Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram leaves England to see to his troubled West Indian estate on which island?

Antigua stays offstage but not unmentioned: when Fanny asks her returned uncle about the slave trade, her cousins meet it with 'such a dead silence' that she lets the subject drop.

Which play do the young people of Mansfield Park rehearse in Sir Thomas's absence?

Lovers' Vows gives the cast cover to flirt, and Edmund warns that Sir Thomas would disapprove; he is right, for the returning baronet halts it and burns every unbound copy he can find in the house.

In Persuasion, Louisa Musgrove is concussed jumping from a seawall in which coastal town?

Lyme Regis's harbour wall, the Cobb, is where Louisa declares 'I am determined I will', jumps a second time and falls senseless; while the others panic it is Anne who calls for a surgeon and picks the right man to fetch him.

In Persuasion, which estate must the vain Sir Walter Elliot let to Admiral Croft to pay his debts?

Kellynch Hall suits its tenant better than its owner: the Admiral's main change is to send away some of the large looking-glasses from Sir Walter's dressing-room, because 'there was no getting away from one's self'.

In Persuasion, which character's letter tells Anne Elliot, 'I am half agony, half hope'?

Captain Wentworth writes it while overhearing Anne argue that women love longest. By family account Austen found her first ending 'tame and flat', so she cancelled it and wrote this scene instead.

The Dashwood women in Sense and Sensibility move to Barton Cottage in which county?

Devon was far from their Sussex home, and that became the cottage's 'first recommendation': a cousin's offer at an easy rent arrived just as Mrs Dashwood's stepson's wife hinted that Elinor was out to catch her brother.

Whose flannel waistcoat convinces Marianne Dashwood he is too old to marry?

Colonel Brandon is only 35, but to Marianne at 17 that is past all feeling; Austen says she was 'born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions', and at 19 she marries him, flannel waistcoat and all.

Which 1995 teen comedy transplants the plot of Emma to a Beverly Hills high school?

Clueless was researched in person: Amy Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High, found the real students mostly in grunge, and invented the brighter 'comedy of manners' world she wanted instead.

Who directed the 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility, for which Emma Thompson won a screenplay Oscar?

Ang Lee thought the producers were 'crazy' to ask a director raised in Taiwan, then decided halfway through the script that he had 'been trying to do Jane Austen without knowing it'.

Who played Darcy opposite Greer Garson in MGM's 1940 Pride and Prejudice?

Laurence Olivier inherited a part first announced for Clark Gable: MGM planned the film in 1936 with Gable opposite Norma Shearer, then shelved it when her husband, production chief Irving Thalberg, died.

Who plays the scheming widow Lady Susan in Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman's 2016 Austen film?

Kate Beckinsale was reunited on screen with Chloë Sevigny, her co-star in Stillman's The Last Days of Disco; the title is lifted from an unrelated spoof Austen wrote in her teens.

Which actress played Austen herself in the 2007 biographical film Becoming Jane?

Anne Hathaway, an American, moved to England a month before filming to work on her accent, and learned the piano, calligraphy and sign language for the part.

Who starred as Emma Woodhouse in Autumn de Wilde's 2020 film of Emma?

Anya Taylor-Joy worked from a script by the Booker winner Eleanor Catton, and the full stop in the film's title, Emma., is a pun: the director said it is there because this is a period film.

Which actress played a fourth-wall-breaking Anne Elliot in Netflix's 2022 Persuasion?

Dakota Johnson's Anne gulps red wine and throws knowing looks at the camera, a style that critics at Variety and the Guardian likened, unkindly, to the TV comedy Fleabag.

During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which country banned Austen as a bourgeois imperialist?

When her books were reissued there in the late 1970s, officials were baffled that people read them for pleasure rather than political instruction.

Before the Austen women moved in, the Chawton house that is now Jane Austen's House had once been what?

The house had been a pub, then home to the estate bailiff, before the Austen women moved in during 1809; there Jane wrote or revised all six of her novels.

Austen is regarded as the first English novelist to make extensive use of which narrative technique?

It lets her slide between the narrator's voice and a character's thoughts without quotation marks, which is where much of her irony lives.

In which town near her birthplace, Steventon, was a life-size bronze of Jane Austen unveiled in July 2017?

Basingstoke set the figure in its Market Place, where she went to dances at the assembly rooms; sculptor Adam Roud shows her walking through town with a book in her hand.

In Pride and Prejudice, which charming officer elopes with Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister?

George Wickham is bribed into marrying her by Darcy, who secretly pays off his debts and buys him an army commission; the secret gets out when Lydia lets slip that Darcy was at the wedding.

Austen is thought to have taken the title Pride and Prejudice from which Fanny Burney novel?

Cecilia ends with a doctor blaming the lovers' troubles on 'PRIDE and PREJUDICE', printed three times in capitals within one speech, and Austen praised the book by name in one of her own novels.

Which American writer joked that leaving out Austen's novels would make a fairly good library out of one with no books?

Mark Twain made the jab in Following the Equator, and told a friend that her books 'madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy', so he had to stop every time he began to criticise her.

Austen's cousin Eliza lost her French husband to what?

The guillotine widowed Eliza in 1794, during the Reign of Terror; at the end of 1797 she married into the Austen family, becoming Jane's sister-in-law as well as her cousin.

Austen and her sister boarded at the Abbey School, housed in an old abbey gateway in which Berkshire town?

Reading's Abbey School took Jane, the younger, only because she would not be parted from her sister; their mother said that if one were to have her head cut off, the other would insist on sharing her fate.

Which colonial governor, acquitted after a seven-year impeachment trial, delighted Austen by praising Pride and Prejudice?

Warren Hastings was godfather to Austen's cousin Eliza, so a copy reached him through the family, and in 1813 she wrote, 'I am quite delighted with what such a man writes about it.'

In Austen's spoof Love and Freindship, dying Sophia advises 'Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not' what?

Faint is the fatal habit: Sophia swoons on damp ground and dies of the chill, while Laura, who ran mad instead, kept her blood warm and survived.

Austen's teenage History of England declares its main aim is to prove whose innocence?

Mary, Queen of Scots is the heroine of a history that boasts of its bias: its other stated aim is 'to abuse Elizabeth', and it is signed by 'a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian'.

In Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy's great estate Pemberley lies in which English county?

Derbyshire is where Elizabeth tours Pemberley believing its owner away; she later jokes that her love dates from 'first seeing his beautiful grounds'.

At Chawton, Austen reportedly refused to have what repaired because its noise announced visitors?

A creaking door gave her time to slip her small sheets under blotting paper, a family memoir recalled: she wrote in the shared sitting room and kept her authorship from servants and visitors.

Which novelist dismissed Austen's Pride and Prejudice as 'a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden' with no open country?

Charlotte Brontë read it only because the critic George Henry Lewes praised it, then told him she would hardly like to live with Austen's ladies and gentlemen 'in their elegant but confined houses'.

Under what French title did Félix Fénéon translate Northanger Abbey?

Catherine Morland echoes Austen's own name for the book: in 1817 she still called the unpublished novel Catherine, writing that 'Miss Catherine is put upon the shelf for the present'.

Which American singer bought Jane Austen's turquoise ring at auction in 2012, only for Britain to block its export?

Kelly Clarkson had to give the ring up when an export ban kept it in the country, and Jane Austen's House bought it with the help of £100,000 from an anonymous donor.

Which meddling aunt in Austen's Mansfield Park gave her name to Argus Filch's cat in the Harry Potter books?

Mrs Norris, the aunt who bullies young Fanny Price, lent her name to the cat that patrols the corridors of Hogwarts; J. K. Rowling has called Austen her favourite author.

Which creatures menace the Bennet sisters in Seth Grahame-Smith's 2009 mash-up of Pride and Prejudice?

Zombies stalk the countryside in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which credits Austen as co-author; its publisher followed it with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

According to the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, a single man with a good fortune must want what?

A wife, says the ironic first sentence; the next admits that it is really the neighbouring families who see him as the rightful property of one of their daughters.

What is Jane Austen's sister reported to have done with most of the novelist's letters in 1843?

Destroyed them, by burning or otherwise, is the accepted story, and her reasons are much debated; only about 160 of a possible 3,000 letters survive.

From which seaside resort, where the militia is in summer camp, does Lydia Bennet run away in Pride and Prejudice?

Brighton is where Lydia goes as the guest of the newly married Mrs Forster, whose husband commands the regiment; she slips away from there with an officer, and her family fears she is ruined.

In Emma, which fruit do Mr Knightley's guests gather for themselves at his Donwell Abbey garden party in June?

Strawberries were what Donwell was famous for, and one guest praises them without pause until the glaring sun sends her off to sit in the shade.

In Pride and Prejudice, which first name does Mr Darcy share with the surname of his cousin, an earl's younger son?

Fitzwilliam Darcy signs his full name at the foot of the long letter he hands Elizabeth after she refuses him, one of the few places where the novel spells it out.

Which British crime writer continued Pride and Prejudice with a 2011 murder mystery, Death Comes to Pemberley?

P. D. James set her sequel six years after the wedding of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, with an officer killed on the estate and an old enemy of the family tried for the murder.

In Pride and Prejudice, what yearly income is Mr Darcy reported to have within minutes of entering the Meryton ball?

£10,000 a year is the rumour that sweeps the room, and Mr Darcy is admired for about half the evening, until his manners turn the tide of his popularity.

Austen's sister lost her fiancé, a military chaplain, to which disease on a Caribbean expedition in 1797?

Yellow fever killed Thomas Fowle, a young clergyman who had joined the expedition as chaplain to his cousin only because he needed money to marry.

Which surname did Austen's third brother take in 1812, under the will of the rich relatives who made him their heir?

Knight was the name of the wealthy couple who met him at twelve and later sent him on a tour of Europe; he inherited three estates from them, among them Godmersham and Chawton.

Which unfinished Austen novel about a clergyman's daughters was abandoned after her own father died in 1805?

The Watsons stayed in manuscript until 1871, yet a niece had already borrowed its plot for a three-volume novel of her own, The Younger Sister, in 1850.

Early family biographers left out that Austen's wealthy aunt had been arrested, tried and acquitted on which charge?

Grand larceny was the charge, and the episode was among the awkward details deliberately omitted from early accounts of the family, along with a brother who was raised away from home.

Which Victorian poet is said to have asked to see the exact spot where Persuasion's Louisa Musgrove fell?

Tennyson is said to have gone straight to the harbour wall on arrival, treating a fictional accident from an 1818 novel as the town's main sight.

Which technology company's founders set up the foundation that leased Chawton House, the manor of Austen's brother?

Cisco founders Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack's foundation paid £1.25 million for a 125-year lease in 1992, and the house became a research library for early women's writing.

Curtis Sittenfeld's 2016 novel Eligible moves the Bennet family of Pride and Prejudice to which American city?

Cincinnati is the family's home town in Eligible, where the rich newcomer the mother has her eye on is a doctor and former contestant on a reality dating show.

Which London institution holds the unfinished sketch of Jane Austen's face that her sister made around 1810?

National Portrait Gallery visitors see a frontal sketch that was never finished; her sister's only other picture of her, painted in 1804, shows the novelist from behind, seated by a tree.

Which author wrote The History of Sir Charles Grandison, the favourite novel that Austen parodied in a short play?

Samuel Richardson published it in 1753, and her comedy in six acts, begun in the 1790s and finished around 1800, sends up the abridged schoolbook versions of his story.

Besides farming, how did Jane Austen's father add to the family income from 1773 until 1796?

Teaching boarding pupils meant three or four boys at a time lived in the family home, so the future novelist grew up in a house that doubled as a small school.

Which house, three miles from Longbourn, does a rich young bachelor rent at the start of Pride and Prejudice?

Netherfield is let to a single man with four or five thousand a year, news that sends Mrs Bennet straight to her husband to insist that he pay a call.

Which legal arrangement stops the Bennet sisters inheriting Longbourn from their father in Pride and Prejudice?

An entail settles the estate on a male cousin, and Mrs Bennet rails bitterly against it; her eldest daughters try to explain how it works, but she is beyond the reach of reason.

Which feature of Elizabeth Bennet does Mr Darcy praise early in Pride and Prejudice, to a jealous rival's annoyance?

Her eyes change his opinion not long after he has refused to dance with her; he admits he has been meditating on the very great pleasure that a fine pair can bestow.

In Pride and Prejudice, which of Mrs Bennet's complaints does her husband call his old friends of twenty years?

Her nerves, he tells her, have his high respect, since he has heard them mentioned with consideration for two decades; the tease sums up their ill-matched marriage.

In Pride and Prejudice, the Gardiners give up a tour of which region, taking Elizabeth Bennet to Pemberley instead?

The Lake District had to be given up when business cut Mr Gardiner's holiday short, so a shorter tour brought Elizabeth to Pemberley while its owner was thought to be away.

Who shocks Emma Woodhouse by proposing to her in a carriage on Christmas Eve, when she had meant him for Harriet Smith?

Mr Elton, the village vicar, had been courting Emma all along; refused, he goes away for a few weeks and comes back engaged to an heiress he has only just met.

Emma opens just after the heroine's companion of sixteen years has married; what post had she held at Hartfield?

Governess in name, she had been more of a friend than a teacher, and Mr Woodhouse grieves over the wedding as if she had suffered a misfortune.

Which bland dish does the anxious Mr Woodhouse recommend to his guests in Emma as the only truly wholesome supper?

Gruel, thin and smooth, is his idea of a treat; while he praises a small basin of it, his daughter makes sure the visitors get the minced chicken and scalloped oysters.

In Emma, which costly gift arrives anonymously for Jane Fairfax, setting the whole village guessing at the sender?

A pianoforte from Broadwood's appears at her aunt's rooms without a word of warning; Emma suspects a married admirer, but it was ordered by the man Jane is secretly engaged to.

Harriet Smith treasures a pencil stub from the day her idol noted Mr Knightley's advice on brewing which drink in Emma?

Spruce beer was the talk that morning, and Harriet keeps the leadless pencil end in a parcel marked as her most precious treasures until she throws it on the fire.

In Sense and Sensibility, which mishap on a rainy hillside throws the middle Dashwood sister into a stranger's arms?

A twisted ankle stops her as she runs downhill in a sudden shower, and a gentleman out shooting with two pointers lifts her up and carries her home.

In Sense and Sensibility, which keepsake from the middle Dashwood sister convinces her family she is engaged?

A lock of hair, cut off with her own scissors, kissed and folded into his pocket-book, is all the proof her youngest sister needs that a wedding is coming.

The Dashwood women must give up which Sussex estate to a half-brother at the start of Sense and Sensibility?

Norland passes to the son of an earlier marriage, who promises his dying father to look after the women and is then talked out of giving them anything much.

Which instrument does Miss Crawford play in Mansfield Park, drawing Edmund Bertram to the Parsonage every morning?

The harp arrives late because no cart can be hired in the middle of a very late hay harvest, a difficulty that astonishes its London-bred owner.

Which ornament from Sicily, a gift from her sailor brother, does Fanny Price wear to her uncle's ball in Mansfield Park?

An amber cross is almost her only ornament, and her need of a chain for it sets off a rivalry of gifts; Austen herself owned a topaz one, which her house museum displays.

Which book is the only one the vain Sir Walter Elliot ever takes up for amusement in the opening lines of Persuasion?

The Baronetage lets him admire his own family's entry, which he has improved by hand with extra details, and it distracts him when his debts grow heavy.

In Persuasion, which Somerset village is home to the Musgrove family, with whom Anne Elliot spends the autumn?

Uppercross is where Anne is summoned by a younger sister who expects not to have a day's health all autumn, and where she meets her former suitor again after eight years.

In Austen's Gothic parody, the manuscript the heroine finds in an old cabinet on a stormy night turns out to be what?

Laundry bills and a farrier's account are all that daylight reveals, left behind by a careless servant, and she feels humbled to the dust for her Gothic fancies.

Which fabric does the hero of Austen's Gothic parody claim to understand, boasting of a bargain bought for his sister?

Muslin is his party piece: he tells a delighted chaperone that he paid five shillings a yard for a true Indian one, then warns that the heroine's gown will fray.

In Mansfield Park, the languid Lady Bertram sits on her sofa all day, caring more for which pet than for her children?

A pug is her constant companion, and when the timid young Fanny Price first arrives, her aunt's one worry is that the child will tease it.

At the Meryton ball in Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy declines to dance with Elizabeth Bennet, calling her merely what?

Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him, is the verdict she overhears; she retells the story to her friends with great spirit, as a joke at his expense.

Jane Austen's six novels chiefly portray, and quietly criticise, which layer of the English society of her day?

The landed gentry gave her a small canvas of country families, and her plots keep returning to how far their women depend on marriage for security and standing.

In Pride and Prejudice, where does Lydia Bennet's farewell note claim she is heading to be married?

Gretna Green is what she writes, calling anyone who cannot guess her companion a simpleton, but the pair never get there and are traced to London unmarried.

In Pride and Prejudice, why does Mrs Bennet send her eldest daughter out to dinner on horseback?

Rain would strand her there, her mother reckons, and the scheme works too well: the soaked girl falls ill and has to be nursed at the house for days.

The Victorian critic G. H. Lewes praised Austen's economy of art in 1859 and compared her to which earlier writer?

William Shakespeare was the yardstick Lewes reached for in an unsigned essay for Blackwood's Magazine, and a later Victorian critic, Richard Simpson, carried the comparison on.

Which short satire did Austen write as revenge for a royal librarian's pompous letters of advice?

Plan of a Novel is a mock outline of the perfect book his many hints would produce; she had been greatly annoyed by the unwanted letters of advice he kept sending.

In Mansfield Park, a locked gate and a ha-ha tempt Maria Bertram on a visit to which estate of her fiancé?

Sotherton is where she squeezes round the locked gate with another man rather than wait for her betrothed to fetch the key, a hint of the scandal to come.

A boastful suitor in Austen's Gothic parody tempts the heroine with a drive to which supposedly ancient castle?

Blaise Castle was really a sham, a folly built on the edge of Bristol in 1766, so the joke is on a heroine who is promised the oldest fortress in the kingdom; she never even gets there.

A royal librarian's 1815 invitation to tour which London residence led Austen to dedicate Emma to its owner?

Carlton House was where she was shown round the library and told she was at liberty to dedicate a future novel to its royal occupant, a hint she took when Emma came out that December.

In Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford's admiral uncle helps Fanny Price's sailor brother win promotion to which rank?

Lieutenant was the step the young midshipman had despaired of reaching without patrons, and the favour is designed to oblige Fanny just before her admirer proposes to her.