Cold Open

It’s fall 1802 at Manydown Park, a manor house in Hampshire, England.

27-year-old Jane Austen creeps down the stairs. She's walking quietly, trying not to make too much noise—because right now, she can’t bear to face the other inhabitants of the house.

A few days ago, Jane arrived at Manydown Park to visit with her friends, Catherine and Alethea Bigg. But the Bigg sisters weren’t the only members of the family at home during Jane’s stay. Their 21-year-old brother Harris Bigg-Wither was there too, and he became infatuated with Jane’s quick wit and inquiring mind. Last night, Harris surprised Jane by proposing marriage—and she accepted. But after lying awake all night with worry, Jane came to regret her decision, and at breakfast this morning, she went back on her promise. Now, she’s desperate to escape Manydown Park and the awkward atmosphere she’s created.

When she reaches the bottom of stairs, Jane opens the front door and peeks outside.

A carriage is waiting for her on the wide path and Jane wraps her coat tight around her and rushes from the house. She steps up and takes a seat on the carriage, nodding her thanks to the driver.

And with a gentle lurch, the carriage moves off. Jane takes one last look back at Manydown Park as it recedes from view, knowing that her last prospect of marriage is disappearing with it. Word will soon get around that she’s turned down an eligible suitor—and that’ll leave Jane unmarried in a society when the expectation is that all women become wives and mothers. Now, she’ll just have to find something else to do with her life.

No one knows exactly why Jane Austen chose to call off her engagement after just one day. Perhaps Jane just was not that attracted to Harris Bigg-Wither. Or maybe Jane realized that being married would prevent her from pursuing her real love: writing.

By 1802, Jane has already authored several manuscripts. But none has yet been published—and none will for years to come. Her path to become a professional writer will be a rocky one, and no one will even know that Jane is the author of her own book when Sense and Sensibility is finally published on October 30th, 1811.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is October 30th, 1811: Jane Austen’s First Novel.

Act One

It’s fall 1783 in Steventon, a small village in Hampshire, England, 28 years before the publication of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

Seven-year-old Jane struggles to keep her eyes open as the carriage she’s sitting in rocks and sways. Her nine-year-old sister Cassandra watches Jane with a look of concern, occasionally holding her hand against Jane’s forehead to check for her temperature.

For the last few months, Jane and Cassandra have been boarding with a governess who’s been charged with their education. But recently, an outbreak of typhus struck Southampton, the city where the governess lives. The rapid spread of the disease caused the panic. Typhus is a killer with no known cure, so the girls were removed from the governess’s house and put on a carriage for the 25-mile journey home to their parents in rural Steventon.

But the intervention has come too late. When the sisters arrive at the Austen family home, Jane can barely step down from the carriage. Her parents help her inside the house, but she complains of a headache and exhaustion. Jane’s rushed to bed, where she soon develops a fever and a rash. It’s typhus. Jane’s father summons a doctor, but he can’t do anything to stop the disease. All Jane’s family can do is pray that she’s strong enough to pull through.

After weeks of bedrest, Jane finally begins to recover. But her return to full health takes time. For months, she’s easily fatigued. So, rather than send Jane back to a governess, her parents allow her to remain at home and to recover at her own pace. She doesn’t resume formal education for two years, when she and Cassandra are sent to board at Reading Abbey Girls’ School. But Jane doesn’t last long there. After little more than a year, the sisters return home because their father can no longer afford the fees. As the vicar of a small parish, Jane’s father must watch every penny. His annual salary of £200 is the equivalent of around $40,000 today, and to support his large family, Reverend Austen has to supplement his income by taking in lodgers.

So back at home again, Jane and Cassandra try to educate themselves. They make use of their father’s library and read voraciously. Then they put on plays based on the stories that they’ve found. Soon enough, Jane begins writing herself. And during her teenage years, Jane fills notebook after notebook with poems, plays, and novellas.

And then at the end of December 1795, when Jane is 20, she falls in love. The object of her affection is a visitor to the village, Tom Lefroy, a recent graduate who’s on his way to London to train as a barrister. He and Jane met at a ball, and they instantly hit it off. But the timing isn’t right. Tom has no job yet and is financially dependent on his uncle. Meanwhile, Jane’s father can’t afford a dowry. And faced with certain financial hardship if they were to wed, Jane and Tom are sadly forced to conclude that they cannot marry. When Tom leaves Steventon for London, Jane tries to distract herself with a new project. She’s going to write her first full-length novel.

Over the next few months, Jane works hard on a book that she titles Elinor and Marianne. The plot has some parallels to her own life. It follows two sisters as they come of age in a family where money is a constant worry. Elinor and Marianne encounter romance and heartbreak as their widowed mother moves them from their family estate to the modest home of a distant relative. But the novel doesn’t echo every part of Jane’s life. In the book, Elinor and Marianne end up getting married. But in real life, Jane and her sister Cassandra remain single, and both follow their father when he moves the family out of the countryside to the growing city of Bath in 1800.

Two years later, in 1802, 27-year-old Jane does get another chance at love, or at least a partnership, when Harris Bigg-Wither proposes marriage. This time, there are no financial worries to prevent the match. Harris is the heir to his father’s fortune and in line to inherit Manydown Park, a manor house with 1,500 acres of land.

But Jane will cause a minor scandal when she backs out of her engagement to Harris after less than 24 hours. It’ll leave her facing a future as an unmarried spinster, but Jane will accept her lot in life. She’ll not become a wife and mother. But instead, she’ll pursue an alternative and unusual vocation for a woman. She will become a writer.

Act Two

It’s early 1803 in Bath, England, eight years before Jane Austen’s first novel is published.

Jane, now 27 years old, knocks gently on the door to her father’s study. He calls for her to enter, and then gestures to the chair beside his desk. Without saying a word, he pushes a letter that’s just arrived across the table toward her. Intrigued, Jane picks it up. Her hands begin to tremble as she realizes that this letter is from Benjamin Crosby, a publisher based in London. As she reads, she breaks out into a wide smile. Benjamin has agreed to pay £10 for the copyright to her latest novel, the equivalent of around $1500 today.

After Jane decided not to get married and focus on her career as a writer instead, her father offered to be her literary agent. But this was not just the act of a supportive father - it was a necessary step to protect the family’s reputation. At the beginning of the 19th century, it is considered inappropriate for a woman in England to be a professional writer. Social convention holds that women should above all aspire to become wives and mothers. Writing should be a hobby at best. That, of course, has not stopped women from writing. But to avoid spoiling their family’s reputations, female authors often disguise their identities by writing under a pen name. So, Jane’s father has sent her anonymous manuscripts to publishers on her behalf and intends to negotiate and sign any contracts for her.

But while her father’s been looking for a publisher, Jane has not been idle. Over the last few months, she’s continued to revise Elinor and Marianne. She’s written a second novel called First Impressions. And she’s just finished a third, titled Susan—and it’s this one that the publisher Benjamin Crosby wants to take on.

Soon, Benjamin and Jane’s father sign a publishing agreement. But just because Benjamin Crosby has bought the copyright to Susan, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Jane’s novel will see the light of day. Over the next several months, Benjamin sits on the manuscript. He’s slow to answer queries from Jane’s father. And when he does, Benjamin promises that he’ll add Susan to his catalog soon—but he never gets around to it before tragedy strikes the Austen household.

In January 1805, almost two years after Benjamin bought the copyright to Jane’s novel, Reverend Austen dies. The family is heartbroken - and left in a precarious financial situation. Without her father’s income, Jane, her sisters, and her mother face an uncertain future.

So Jane’s career as a writer is put on hold. Her father was her literary agent and she has no money to pay for anyone else to represent her. So, she has little option but to wait and hope that Benjamin Crosby finally publishes Susan. But the months drag on with no updates.

Frustrated by the delay, Jane eventually writes to Benjamin herself. She declares that if he refuses to release Susan, then she’ll find a publisher that will. And this time, Benjamin responds promptly—but his reply is a threatening one. He declares that if Jane signs with another publisher, Benjamin will take legal action. He has bought the rights to Susan, and the novel is his to do whatever he wants with—even if that’s nothing at all.

Discouraged that her literary career has stalled, Jane puts down her pen and stops working on her manuscripts. Instead, she assumes the lifestyle expected of an unmarried woman and attends balls and parties. She goes on excursions to the countryside and visits with friends. Writing seems to be forgotten.

But then in 1809, the fortunes of the Austen family suddenly improve. Jane’s older brother Edward inherits an estate from his wife’s family, and he invites his mother and unmarried sisters to move into a cottage on his new land. At the same time, another brother, Henry, agrees to take over as Jane’s literary agent—and he approaches the job with enthusiasm.

Although Jane’s novel Susan is still stuck in limbo, Henry fires off letters to publishers offering them Jane’s other completed manuscripts. Soon, Thomas Egerton replies saying that he’s interested in the novel that Jane wrote more than a decade earlier: Elinor and Marianne.

After years of frustration, Jane Austen will finally land the publishing deal that she’s always wanted. But in her desperation to get her work into print, she’ll gamble her newfound security on the book being a success. If it isn’t, it won’t just be the end of her literary dreams. It’ll be a financial disaster that could push her family back into the grip of poverty.

Act Three

It’s October 30th, 1811, in the village of Chawton in southern England, a year after Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Elinor and Marianne.

35-year-old Jane Austen settles back in a comfortable chair and examines the book in front of her. This is a moment she’s waited a long time for—her first novel is finally in print. Jane opens the blue hardback cover and smiles as she sees the title emblazoned on the first page: Sense and Sensibility.

Last year, after the publisher agreed to take on Jane’s novel Elinor and Marianne, Jane returned to the manuscript that she’d first written 15 years earlier. As she made revisions to the original text, she decided that the novel needed a title that better reflected its themes. After some thought, she decided on Sense and Sensibility.

The novel is all Jane’s work, but very few people are aware that she’s the person behind it. Publicly, the author is only identified as “a lady.” Jane’s decided to stick with the convention of the times and publish her work anonymously - but her fate is still inextricably linked to the success of the book.

To ensure that her book was actually published this time, Jane paid for printing herself. 750 copies of Sense and Sensibility have cost her over £150, over a third of Jane’s annual household income. It’s a big gamble - but one that pays off.

Reviews of Sense and Sensibility are positive, and the first print run sells out. Now, with proof that her writing is popular, Jane persuades Thomas Egerton to publish a second book. She originally called this one First Impressions, but again Jane changes the title just before it goes to print. Her second novel hit bookshelves in 1813 as Pride and Prejudice.

By the time she falls ill and dies in 1816 at the age of just 41, Jane will be the author of four published novels. Another three will be published after her death. Among them will be Susan, the manuscript that sat on publisher Benjamin Crosby’s shelf for years. Only now, it’ll be known as Northanger Abbey—and it’ll be the first book that identifies Jane Austen as its author.

From then on, Jane’s popularity and fame will only grow. Her writing will reach generations of readers, who’ll all be captivated by Jane’s iconic characters and witty social commentary. In the modern age, her novels will be studied in schools across the world, and they’ll inspire countless television and movie adaptations. But that success would have seemed a very distant prospect to Jane during her long struggle to see her work in print - a struggle that finally came to an end on October 30th, 1811.

Outro

Next on History Daily. October 31st, 1837. While being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, hundreds of Creek Indians die in a Mississippi River steamboat collision.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Joel Callen.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.