70 Fun Facts About Jane Austen

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

She was born at the rectory in Steventon, a village of a few hundred people in north Hampshire, and lived there until she was 25.

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

He supplemented a modest clerical income by farming and by taking in three or four boys at a time as boarding pupils.

Jane Austen was one of how many children in her family?

Six of the eight were boys; Jane and her elder sister were the only daughters, which is part of why the two were so close.

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

Their mother said that if Cassandra's head were going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too. Cassandra is also believed to have burned most of Jane's letters after her death.

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

Both girls were sent home ill, and Jane was afterwards educated at home apart from a short spell at a boarding school in Reading.

Austen wrote the satirical epistolary tale Love and Freindship (her spelling) at what age?

It mocked the fashionable novels of sensibility. She copied 29 early pieces into three notebooks that scholars now call the Juvenilia.

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

His family sent him away at the end of January 1796, and she never saw him again. The 2007 film Becoming Jane is built around the episode.

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

He also sat as MP for Dublin University for over a decade and lived to 93, outliving Austen by more than 50 years.

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

He was heir to large estates near where she grew up; the match would have secured her family's future, and she still turned it down.

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

Her father retired there suddenly. She wrote almost nothing new during the years that followed, and the family left the city after his death in 1805.

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

He had been adopted by wealthy childless relatives and inherited their estates, taking the surname Knight; the cottage sat on his Chawton estate.

Two of Austen's siblings rose to the rank of admiral in which service?

Their careers gave her the naval detail in Mansfield Park and Persuasion, where prize money and promotion drive whole plotlines.

What was the highest rank eventually reached by Austen's brother Francis?

As captain of the sloop Peterel he took some 40 ships. He died in 1865 at 91, the longest-lived of the Austen siblings.

Which London publisher bought Austen's manuscript Susan for £10 in 1803 and never printed it?

She wrote him an angry letter in 1809 and eventually bought the copyright back for the same £10 in 1816. The book finally appeared after her death under a different title.

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

Her later books were billed as by the author of Sense and Sensibility. Her name never appeared on any of her novels in her lifetime.

For how much did Austen sell the copyright of Pride and Prejudice outright to Thomas Egerton?

It was the only novel she sold outright rather than publishing at her own risk. Had she published it on commission she would have made about £475, twice her father's annual income.

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

Emma sold well, but Murray's second edition of Mansfield Park flopped and wiped out most of the profit.

Emma was dedicated, at his librarian's heavy hint, to which royal whom Austen privately disapproved of?

He kept a set of her novels at each of his residences. She thought him a womaniser and a spendthrift but could hardly refuse.

Austen's satirical Plan of a Novel was written as revenge on the pompous literary advice of whom?

James Stanier Clarke kept sending suggestions for her next book. She turned them into a parody outline of the perfect novel.

Which leading novelist anonymously reviewed Emma in 1815, praising its copying from nature?

He used the review to defend the whole disreputable genre of the novel. Austen, for her part, joked that he had no business writing novels when he was already so successful a poet.

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

Hodgkin's lymphoma has been proposed as an alternative. She made light of it as bile and rheumatism, and put down her pen for good on 18 March 1817.

Austen died in July 1817, aged 41. Where was she buried?

Her brother arranged the burial through his clerical connections. The 2017 £10 note with serial number AA01001817 was donated to the cathedral to mark the year.

What does the epitaph on Austen's gravestone conspicuously fail to mention?

It praises the extraordinary endowments of her mind but says nothing of her books. A later brass tablet, paid for from her first biography's proceeds, 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?

He had acted as her go-between with publishers for years, and his bank's collapse in March 1816 was one reason her final novels were delayed.

Roughly how many of the estimated 3,000 letters Austen wrote in her lifetime survive?

Her sister is thought to have destroyed the rest, possibly to keep the younger nieces from reading Jane's acid remarks about neighbours and relations.

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

Her father offered it to a London publisher in 1797; it came back marked Declined by Return of Post.

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

It was read to the family before 1796 as a story told in letters; she rewrote it in third person over 1797-98.

Under what working title did Austen write Persuasion in 1815-16?

Dissatisfied with the ending, she rewrote the last two chapters in the summer of 1816; her brother chose the published title after her death.

Austen called the unfinished novel we now know as Sanditon by what working title?

She wrote twelve chapters between January and mid-March 1817, mocking hypochondriacs even as her own health failed. It was first published in 1925.

Lady Susan, the epistolary novella Austen wrote around 1794, was not published until which year?

It appeared in the enlarged second edition of her nephew's memoir, alongside the fragment The Watsons. Its heroine has been described as a sexual predator with a greater intelligence than anyone she meets.

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

The memoir triggered a wave of new editions and, by the 1880s, what Leslie Stephen called Austenolatry.

Which literary scholar coined the term Janeite in his 1894 introduction to Pride and Prejudice?

He meant it as a badge of honour. Rudyard Kipling later wrote a story called The Janeites about First World War soldiers who were secret Austen fans.

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

The note followed a campaign to keep a woman on the back of a Bank of England note after Elizabeth Fry was replaced by Winston Churchill.

Whom did Austen replace on the reverse of the Bank of England note?

The Darwin paper note, first issued in 2000, was withdrawn from circulation on 1 March 2018.

Which character speaks the banknote line 'I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!'?

The irony is that she has no interest in reading at all and is only trying to impress Mr Darcy, which critics were quick to point out.

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

It was finished by 1799 but published only after her death, with the title chosen by her brother; she had called it Susan and then Catherine.

Which 1794 Ann Radcliffe novel does Isabella Thorpe press on the impressionable Catherine Morland?

Catherine reads it expecting her hosts' abbey to be full of horrors and ends up suspecting General Tilney of murdering his wife.

Emma is set in which fictional Surrey village?

Around it lie the estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey. Austen predicted no one but herself would much like its heroine.

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

Mr Knightley's rebuke afterwards is the turning point of the novel; she visits Miss Bates the next day to atone.

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

Her father is a retired Marines officer. When she returns years later, the chaotic household shocks her after the calm of Mansfield.

In Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram leaves England for his sugar plantation on which island?

His absence lets the young people stage private theatricals. The plantation has made the novel central to postcolonial readings of Austen.

Which Elizabeth Inchbald play do the young people at Mansfield Park rehearse?

Austen herself grew up with family theatricals in the Steventon barn, including Sheridan's The Rivals.

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

Anne's cool head in the crisis is what makes Captain Wentworth look at her again. The Cobb is still one of the most visited Austen sites.

What is the name of the Elliot family estate that Sir Walter is forced to let to Admiral Croft?

The Crofts turn out to be far better custodians than the vain baronet, which is rather the point.

How old is Anne Elliot when Persuasion opens, an unusually mature age for an Austen heroine?

She had broken her engagement to Wentworth at 19; the two meet again after almost eight years apart.

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

It is offered cheaply by their relative Sir John Middleton, and it is there that Marianne sprains her ankle and meets Willoughby.

How old is Colonel Brandon when he first admires the 16-year-old Marianne Dashwood?

He wears a flannel waistcoat, which to Marianne is proof enough of decrepitude. She marries him anyway.

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

Amy Heckerling had read the novel in college and loved its heroine's positivity; Alicia Silverstone's Cher is the Emma figure.

Emma Thompson won an Oscar for the screenplay of the 1995 Sense and Sensibility. Who directed the film?

1995 was the year of the Austen boom: the film arrived alongside the BBC's Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

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

Critics have noted that American adaptations from this one onward tend to soften the class hierarchy Austen took for granted.

Who plays the scheming title character in Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman's 2016 film of Lady Susan?

The film borrowed its title from a different Austen work, the teenage spoof Love and Freindship, which has nothing to do with the plot.

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

James McAvoy played the Irish law student. The film draws on Jon Spence's biography and takes considerable liberties with the record.

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

The screenplay was by the Booker-winning novelist Eleanor Catton, and the full stop in the title was deliberate: it is a period film.

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

Cosmo Jarvis played Wentworth. The film's wisecracking, modern-voiced Anne divided Austen readers sharply.

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 briefly been what?

As The New Inn it was the scene of two murders; afterwards the Austens' brother let it to his bailiff before offering it to his mother and sisters.

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 was a Jane Austen statue unveiled in July 2017?

A second statue, by Martin Jennings, followed in October 2025 near the cathedral where she is buried.

In 1797 Austen's father offered her first novel to which London publisher, who returned it 'Declined by Return of Post'?

Jane may never have known he tried. The book was published sixteen years later, after heavy revision, as Pride and Prejudice.

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

The phrase appears three times in block capitals in Burney's final chapter, and Austen was a known admirer of the book.

Which publisher bought Austen's remaining copyrights in 1832 for his Standard Novels?

His 1833 collected edition was the moment her reputation turned; the novels have not been out of print since.

Which Austen brother married Eliza de Feuillide, widow of a French count guillotined in the Terror?

Eliza's stories of glamorous foreign life may have inspired the title character of Lady Susan, and her account of the guillotine left Austen with a lifelong horror of the Revolution.

In which town did Jane and Cassandra board at an Abbey girls' academy from 1785 until fees proved too high?

Run by Mrs La Tournelle, it probably taught French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music and drama.

Besides her father's library, Austen had free run of the books of which family friend and colonial figure?

Her real education came from reading, guided by her father and her brothers James and Henry.

How many early works did Austen copy into the three notebooks now known as the Juvenilia?

The fair copies, made between 1787 and 1793, run to some 90,000 words across Volumes the First, Second and Third.

Whose History of England (1764) did the teenage Austen parody in her own 34-page History?

Cassandra supplied thirteen watercolour miniatures for the manuscript.

At what address in Bath did the Austen family settle when they left Steventon in 1801?

Her father's sudden decision to retire moved her 50 miles from the only home she had known.

On what date in 1809 did Jane, Cassandra and their mother move into Chawton cottage?

Life there was quiet: no socialising with the gentry, much reading, and teaching village children to read and write.

Which French critic first hailed Austen as a 'genius' in an 1878 essay?

Chasles had dismissed her in two sentences in 1842; Fénéon produced the first accurate French translation in 1899.

Under what French title did Félix Fénéon translate Northanger Abbey in 1899?

It was the first accurate translation of Austen into French.