Helen Lefroy - Jane Austen: Essential Biographies

HELEN LEFROY

First published 1997

Reprinted 1999

This edition published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

Helen Lefroy 1997, 1999, 2009, 2011

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7402 1

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7401 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

With gratitude for memories of Jane Austens great-great-nieces, my godmother Louisa Langlois Lefroy and her sisters, Cousin Jessie and Cousin Isabel

Jane Austen (17751817) wrote only six complete novels, two of which were published after her death. In these novels the life of the gentry, landowners and clergy at the end of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries is shown in detail. They are peopled by an assembly of characters, men and women, old and young some, but not many, children who are unforgettable and can become as real to the reader as his or her own friends and family. Jane Austen did not step outside her own self-imposed limits. She does not write of titled people in grand houses although she knew the aristocratic families living in the corner of North Hampshire where she lived with her parents for her first twenty-five years, and as a young and attractive girl was invited to the annual balls given by titled families.

Critics accuse Jane Austen of being obsessed with money and rich relations. But both were a necessity in the society to which she belonged. As the younger daughter of a country parson she knew from an early age that without a dowry she would be unlikely to find a husband among her circle of friends. An eldest son would inherit the property and money to keep it together, or he might be lucky and marry a rich wife. What became of younger sons? They entered the church, the armed forces, and the law; not until later in the nineteenth century did they engage in trade. As benefices in the Church of England were largely privately owned or the property of university colleges, it was essential to know or be related to owners of advowsons and rectories. Twice Mr Austen sought to advance the careers of his two naval sons, both of them reliable, enthusiastic and thoroughly professional young officers, by invoking the help of friends in high places.

All Jane Austens work shows a recognizable standard of values. Her father was a country vicar; his family remained faithful Christians throughout their lives, and went regularly to church. Jane took for granted that a person should be sincere, unselfish, disinterested and unworldly, and that virtue should be judged by good sense and good taste. These beliefs are fundamental to her work. In