Ferghana state university faculty of foreign languages department of philology and teaching languages

Jane Austen

Portrait, c. 1810

With the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811),Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two other novels, Northanger Abbeyand Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and another unfinished novel, The Watsons. Her six full-length novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her moderate success and little fame during her lifetime.
A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and sold as a set. They gradually gained wider acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austenintroduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience.
Austen has inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions like Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Love & Friendship (2016).

Last page of letter from Austen to her sister, Cassandra, 11 June 1799
Little biographical information about Jane Austen's life exists except the few letters that survived and the biographical notes her family members wrote.During her lifetime, Austen may have written as many as 3,000 letters, but only 161 survive. Her older sister Cassandra burned or destroyed the bulk of letters she received in 1843, to prevent their falling into the hands of relatives and ensuring that "younger nieces did not read any of Jane Austen's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours or family members". Cassandra meant to protect the family's reputation from her sister's penchant for forthrightness; in the interest of tact she omitted details of family illnesses and unhappinesses.
The first Austen biography was Henry Thomas Austen's 1818 "Biographical Notice". It appeared in a posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey, and included extracts from two letters, against the judgement of other family members. Details of Austen's life continued to be omitted or embellished in her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and in William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh's biography Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, published in 1913, all of which included additional letters. The legend the family and relatives created reflected their bias in favour of presenting the image of "good quiet Aunt Jane", the portrayal of a woman whose domestic situation was happy and whose family was the mainstay of her life. Modern biographers include details previously excised from the letters and family biographies, but Austen scholar Jan Fergus explains that the challenge is to avoid the presenting the opposite view – one of Austen languishing in periods of deep unhappiness who was "an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family".