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Biographical Note

The impression of the condition of the Church of

England in the eighteenth century which is conveyed

by the character and writings of Laurence Sterne

receives some necessary modification from a study of the

life and works of Jane Austen. Her father, the Reverend

George Austen, held the two rectories of Deane and

Steventon in Hampshire, having been appointed to them

by the favour of a cousin and an uncle. He thus belonged

to the gentry, and it seems likely that he entered the

church more as a profession than a vocation. He con-

sidered that he fulfilled his functions by preaching once a

week and administering the sacraments; and though he

does not seem to have been a man of spiritual gifts, the

decent and dignified performance of these formal duties

earned him the reputation of a model pastor. His abundant

leisure he occupied in farming the rectory acres, educating

his children, and sharing the social life of his class. The

environment of refined worldliness and good breeding thus

indicated was that in which his daughter lived, and which

she pictured in her books.

Jane Austen was born at Steventon on December 16,

1775, the youngest of seven children. She received her

education -- scanty enough, by modern standards -- at home.

Besides the usual elementary subjects, she learned French

and some Italian, sang a little, and became an expert needle-

woman. Her reading extended little beyond the literature

of the eighteenth century, and within that period she seems

to have cared most for the novels of Richardson and Miss

Burney, and the poems of Cowper and Crabbe. Dr.

Johnson, too, she admired, and later was delighted with

both the poetry and prose of Scott. The first twenty-five

years of her life she spent at Steventon; in 1801 she

moved with her family to Bath, then a great center of

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