Author Spotlight: Jane Austen's England and Where to Start with Her Novels

Jane Austen published her first novel at thirty-five and died six years later, leaving six complete novels that have never been out of print. Two centuries on, we still film them, argue about them and press them on friends. If you have never read her, the fuss can be off-putting: long sentences, endless visiting, fortunes counted in pounds a year. Start by knowing what she was actually writing about — and which book to open first.

The England Behind the Novels

Austen lived from 1775 to 1817, in a Hampshire parsonage, then in Bath, Southampton and Chawton. Her novels sit in the late Georgian and Regency years: a rural, orderly-seeming England of gentry families, tenant farmers and clergymen, with the Napoleonic Wars rumbling away just off the page. Two of her brothers served in the Navy, which is why Persuasion and Mansfield Park have salt in the air.

Money is not background detail; it is the plot. A woman of her class could not easily earn a living. Marriage, a governess post or dependence on relatives were the realistic options. Courtship was therefore an economic negotiation as much as a romance, and Austen is exact about it. Mr Darcy has ten thousand a year. Mr Bennet has two thousand, and his estate is entailed away from his five daughters — the fact that drives the whole of Pride and Prejudice. Four Dashwood women share roughly five hundred a year between them. When a character says they cannot afford something, believe them.

Then there is the machinery of meeting people. Balls, assemblies, card parties, morning calls, walks, letters. A woman might dance with a possible husband and then not speak to him again for weeks. Austen gets enormous tension out of that timetable.

The Six Novels, Briefly

• Sense and Sensibility (1811) — two sisters, one self-controlled, one extravagant with her feelings. Money, disappointment, and a superb pair of awful minor characters.
• Pride and Prejudice (1813) — Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. The wittiest and the most readable.
• Mansfield Park (1814) — poor Fanny Price raised by rich relations. Quiet, unsettling and the least forgiving of the six.
• Emma (1815) — a rich, clever, meddling heroine who cannot see her own mistakes. Structurally her neatest book.
• Northanger Abbey (1817) — published after her death, with a teenage heroine and an affectionate spoof of Gothic novels. Light and funny.
• Persuasion (1817) — Anne Elliot given a second chance. Autumnal, restrained, quietly devastating.

What Makes the Novels Last

Three things. First, the irony. Austen's narrator hovers just above her characters, amused. If someone delivers a pompous speech about their own importance, the joke is on them, not on you. Watch for sentences that mean the opposite of what they appear to say — Miss Bingley on her love of reading, Mr Collins on his own modesty. Second, characterisation: her people are inconsistent in the way real people are. Emma is kind and wrong. Marianne is generous and selfish. Third, dialogue. She can carry an entire scene on what is not said.

It is also worth knowing that she published anonymously. Sense and Sensibility appeared "By a Lady", and her authorship was known outside the family only gradually.

Where to Start

Read Pride and Prejudice first. It is her fastest-moving book, it teaches you how to read her, and Elizabeth's viewpoint is comfortable ground to stand on. Once you have finished it, choose your next one by mood:

• Short and funny? Northanger Abbey.
• Quieter, with grown-up regret? Persuasion.
• Her cleverest piece of engineering? Emma.
• Ready for the difficult one? Mansfield Park.

Getting Through Your First Austen

A few practical habits make the difference:

1. Read the first fifty pages slowly. You are learning a set of social rules, not sitting a test.
2. Keep a bookmark with the family tree on it. Relations matter, and names run in families.
3. Watch the money. When someone has "a comfortable independence", ask what that actually means for their choices.
4. Do not skim the long sentences. Read them with the commas; they were built to be spoken aloud.
5. Notice the adjectives. One word from the narrator can damn a character for good.
6. Try an audiobook. A good reader handles the rhythms better than tired eyes do.
7. If you lose the thread, watch the first episode of a faithful adaptation to fix the plot in your head, then return to the book. That is not cheating.

Beyond the Six Novels

If you finish and want more, Lady Susan is a short novel in letters with a deliciously unscrupulous heroine. The teenage Juvenilia is silly and sharp by turns. The Watsons and Sanditon break off where her life did. Her letters survive, though her sister Cassandra destroyed or cut many of them. For a life, Claire Tomalin's Jane Austen: A Life is a reliable, readable choice.

A Sensible Reading Plan

Start Pride and Prejudice this month and take it a few chapters at a time. If it does not click, try Persuasion instead — you are allowed to prefer the later, sadder book. Then read one more, and stop worrying about what you are meant to admire. Austen rewards rereading, so your second novel will be easier than your first; the vocabulary of visits, incomes and entailments becomes familiar surprisingly quickly. Within a couple of books, you will stop noticing the two hundred years between you and her.

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