In this series we discover more about the local heroes behind Knightsbridge’s many blue plaques. Novelist Jane Austen used to visit her brother Henry at his SW1X home, occasionally staying for months at a time while working on some of her most beloved novels
Blue plaque spotlight: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
WHO?
Trailblazing English author
WHERE?
23 Hans Place, London, SW1X 0JY
More than two centuries after her death, Jane Austen’s fiction has irrefutably stood the test of time. She even made it onto that list of 26 authors Yale literary critic Harold Bloom deemed central to the western canon, appearing alongside Leo Tolstoy and Marcel Proust. This is all the more notable given the list stirred controversy by only including four female writers.
Fans of Jane Austen’s work may not realise the extent to which her upbringing nurtured her creative faculties. At her childhood home in Steventon, Hampshire, she was surrounded by humanity: maids, servants, the boarders taken in by her father, the Reverend George Austen, and seven siblings, six of which were brothers. The closest of these was Henry, who would later move to Knightsbridge and prove instrumental in getting Jane’s works published, essentially representing her as an agent pro bono.
One of the family’s favourite pastimes was staging plays for one another, many of which they wrote themselves. Primarily home-schooled, Jane also set about satiating her unquenchable thirst for books in her father’s expansive library. As early as 11 years old, she began writing humorous stories which have been preserved as the Juvenilia. She wrote the satirical comedy Love and Friendship in 1790, as well as the manuscript (possibly in 1974) which would later become Northanger Abbey. In December 1795, student of law Tom Lefroy, generally considered the inspiration behind Mr Darcy, began visiting his family in Steventon, where he and Jane flirted. In a letter dated 9 January 1796 to Cassandra, her sister and closest confidante (closer even than Henry), Jane suggests they were ‘shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together’ at the balls they attended. The Memoir of Chief Justice Lefroy (1871), however, suggests Tom had intended to marry Mary Paul, to whom he would get engaged in 1797, presumably throughout whatever brief dalliance they shared.
After the turn of the century, Jane’s family moved to Bath, where she suffered homesickness, which took its toll on her writing. Harris Bigg-Wither, a childhood friend, proposed to Jane in December 1802. She accepted, then changed her mind the following morning. While her suitor was set to inherit a wealthy estate, she felt no chemistry. A person of consistent principles, she would later advise her niece not to marry in the absence of true love, however economically beneficial. Indeed, Jane was no stranger to conundrums of life and romance like those to which she subjected her characters.
In 1805, George Austen died, leaving his wife and two daughters facing financial difficulty, owing to which they moved in with Frank Austen and his wife in Southampton. This was the least prolific period in Jane’s literary life. But in 1809, Jane’s brother Edward invited his mother and sisters, to their delight, to a house on the Chawton House estate he had inherited.
Their new setting was a pleasant one, though they had to be careful with money – making their own garments and possibly even the ink Jane used to pen her novels. Fortunately, her mother (also named Cassandra) was conscious to grant Jane time away from domestic duties in order to write, having recognised her daughter’s talent.
She would sometimes visit her brother Henry in London, who moved to 23 Hans Place, Knightsbridge in 1814. The house represented one of those places in her life where she could focus on her vocation. She enjoyed taking breaks from writing in its gardens, which remain intact to this day. It was here that the Prince Regent’s librarian, Reverend James Stanier Clarke, showed up, inviting Jane to Carlton House. Once there, he would suggest that she dedicate the novel Emma to the Prince Regent, who was a fan of her work.
Henry had helped Jane with negotiations with a publisher before her debut novel Sense and Sensibility was released in 1811. As you might have guessed, her novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) was extremely popular, as were the subsequent Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). Jane began writing Persuasion in 1815 but became ill the following year. She and her sister moved in May 1817 to Winchester, where Jane died two months later, aged just 41 – her cause of death debated still. Half a year later, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published with prefaces by Henry identifying “Jane Austen” as their author. The novels published during her lifetime, by contrast, had been anonymous, most famously describing themselves as having been written “By a Lady”.
