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friend throughout her life. And as her brothers, Jane felt closest to Henry, who
became a banker and, after his bank failed, an Anglican clergyman. Henry
played the part of literary agent in the later stages of her writing. His large circle
of friends and acquaintances in London included bankers, merchants, publishers,
painters, and actors: he provided Austen with a view of social worlds not
normally visible from a small parish in rural Hampshire.
In 1783, according to family tradition, Jane and Cassandra were sent to
Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Cawley. Both girls caught typhus and Jane
nearly died. Austen was subsequently educated at home, until leaving for
boarding school with her sister Cassandra early in 1785. The school curriculum
probably included some French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music and,
perhaps, drama. By December 1786 Jane and Cassandra had returned home
because the Austens could not afford to send both of their daughters to school.
Austen added her education by reading books, guided by her father and
her brothers. Austen always had free access to her father’s library. Her father
was also tolerant of Austen’s sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and
provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing
and drawing.
Private theatricals were also a part of Austen’s education. From when she
was seven until she was thirteen, the family and close friends staged a series of
plays. Austen would certainly have joined in these activities, as a spectator at
first and as a participant when she was older. Most of the plays were comedies,
which suggests one way in which Austen’s comedic and satirical gifts were
cultivated.
Perhaps in 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories and plays for her
own and her family’s amusement.
As Austen grew into adulthood, she continued to live at her parents’
home, carrying out the activities normal for women of her age, she practised the
piano, assisted her sister and mother with supervising servants, and attended
female relatives during childbirth and older relatives on their deathbeds. She
also attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and
neighbours, and read novels, often of her own composition, aloud with her
family in the evenings.
In 1793 Austen began and then abandoned a short play, later entitled Sir
Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a comedy in 6 acts, which she returned to
and completed around 1800. This was a short parody of various school textbook
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abridgments of Austen’s favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir
Charles Grandison (1753), by Samuel Richardson. Beginning in about 1793,
she began to write longer, more sophisticated works.
Between 1793 and 1795 Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary
novel, usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.
After finishing Lady Susan, Austen attempted her first full-length novel Elinor
and Marianne. Without surviving original manuscripts, there is no way to know
how much of the original draft survived in the novel published in 1811 as Sense
and Sensibility.
When Austen was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a nephew of neighbours, visited
Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. Lefroy and Austen spent much
time together and but the Lefroy family sent him away at the end of January, he
was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him
again. The sentimental relationship between Jane and Tom is at the centre of the
2007 biographical film Becoming Jane.
Austen began work on a second novel, First Impressions, in 1796. She
completed the initial draft in August when she was only 21 (it later became
Pride and Prejudice); as with all of her novels, Austen read the work aloud to
her family as she was working on it. At this time, her father made the first
attempt to publish one of her novels.
During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and
Marianne, Austen began writing a third novel Northanger Abbey, a satire on the
popular Gothic novel.
In December 1802 Austen received her only known proposal of marriage.
Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently finished his education at Oxford and was also
at home. Bigg-Wither proposed and Austen accepted. However, Austen had
known him since both were young and the marriage offered many practical
advantages to Austen and her family. But the next morning, Austen realised she
had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance. No contemporary letters or
diaries describe how Austen felt about this proposal.
In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen started but did not complete a new
novel, The Watsons. The story centres on an invalid clergyman with little money
and his four unmarried daughters. Austen stopped to work on the novel after her
father died on 21 January 1805.
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Around early 1809, Austen’s brother Edward offered his mother and
sisters a more settled life, the use of a large cottage in Chawton village, Chawton
House. In Chawton life was quieter than it had been since the family’s move to
Bath in 1800. The Austens did not socialise with the neighbours and entertained
only when family visited.
During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen successfully published four
novels, which were generally well received. Austen’s earnings from Sense and
Sensibility provided her with some financial and psychological independence.
Early in 1816, Austen began to feel unwell. She ignored her illness at first and
continued to work and to participate in the usual round of family activities.
Austen continued to work in spite of her illness. By mid-April, Austen was confined to her bed. In May, Cassandra and Henry brought Jane to Winchester for
medical treatment. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817, at the age of 41.
Henry, through his clerical connections, arranged for his sister to be buried in
the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral.
After Austen’s death Cassandra and Henry Austen arranged with Murray,
a better known London publisher, the publication of Persuasion and Northanger
Abbey. In 1832 publisher Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights
to all of Austen’s novels and, beginning in either December 1832 or January
1833, published them in five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels
series. Since then, Austen’s novels have been continuously in print.
Famous quotations by Austen:
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good
novel, must be intolerably stupid.
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.
I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love,
from love to matrimony in a moment.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much
sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own,
I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall
never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much.
Angry people are not always wise.
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Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used
synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to
our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
Popular works by Austen:
Novels:
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1815)
Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
Short fiction:
Lady Susan (1794, 1805)
Unfinished fiction
The Watsons (1804)
Sanditon (1817)
Juvenilia (Volume the First, 1787–1793)
Juvenilia (Volume the Second, 1787–1793)
Juvenilia (Volume the Third, 1787–1793)
Useful resources about Austen:
http://www.austen.com/onaust.htm
http://www.janeausten.org/jane-austen-biography.asp
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeinfo.html
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Austen’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Austen’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Austen’s works.
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Mary Shelley
(Мэри Шелли)
Mary Shelley English is best known for her horror novel Frankenstein, or the
Modern Prometheus (1818).
Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was
the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin and famed
feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of The Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792). Sadly for Shelley, she never really knew her mother who died
shortly after her birth. Her father William Godwin was left to care for Shelley
and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay. Imlay was Wollstonecraft’s daughter from
an affair she had with a soldier.
The family had changes after Godwin’s marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont
in 1801. Clairmont brought her own two children into the union, and she and
Godwin later had a son together. Shelley never got along with her stepmother.
Her stepmother decided that her stepsister Jane (later Claire) should be sent
away to school, but she saw no need to educate Shelley.
The Godwin household had a number of distinguished guests during
Shelley’s childhood, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William
Wordsworth. While she didn’t have a formal education, she did make great use
of her father’s extensive library. Shelley could often be found reading,
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sometimes by her mother’s grave. She also liked to daydream, escaping from her
often challenging home life into her imagination.
During the summer of 1812 Shelley went to Scotland to stay with an
acquintance of her father William Baxter and his family. There she experienced
a type of domestic tranquility she had never known. Shelley returned to the
Baxters’ home the following year. In 1814 Mary began a relationship with poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Shelley was a devoted student of her father, but he
soon focused his attentions on Mary. He was still married to his first wife when
he and the teenaged Mary fled England together that same year. The couple was
accompanied by Mary’s stepsister Jane.
When they fell in love, she was nearly 17, he nearly 22. Mary and Percy
Shelley traveled about Europe for a time. They struggled financially and faced
the loss of their first child in 1815. The following summer, the Shelleys were in
Switzerland with Jane Clairmont, Lord Byron and John Polidori. The group
entertained themselves one rainy day by reading a book of ghost stories. Lord
Byron suggested that they all should try their hand at writing their own horror
story. It was at this time that Mary Shelley began work on what would become
her most famous novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.
Mary and Percy Shelley were finally able to wed in December 1816. She
published a travelogue of their escape to Europe, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour
(1817), while continuing to work on her soon-to-famous monster tale. In 1818
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus debuted as a new novel from an
anonymous author. This struggle between a monster and its creator has been an
enduring part of popular culture. In 1994 Kenneth Branaugh and Robert De Niro
appeared in a film adaptation of Shelley’s novel.
Many thought that Percy Bysshe Shelley had written it since he penned its
introduction. The book proved to be a huge success. That same year, the
Shelleys moved to Italy.
While Mary seemed devoted to her husband, she did not have the easiest
marriage. Their union was riddled with adultery and heartache, including the
death of two more of their children. Born in 1819, their son, Percy Florence, was
the only child to live to adulthood. Mary’s life was rocked by another tragedy
when her husband had been out sailing with a friend in 1822 he drowned in the
Gulf of Spezia.
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Made a widow at age 24, Mary Shelley worked hard to support herself
and her son. She wrote several more novels, including Valperga and the science
fiction tale The Last Man (1826). She also devoted herself to promoting her
husband’s poetry and preserving his place in literary history. For several years,
Shelley faced some opposition from her husband’s father who had always
disapproved his son’s bohemian lifestyle.
Mary Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, at age 53, in
London, England. She was buried at St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, laid to
rest alongside her father and mother and with the cremated remains of her late
husband’s heart.
Famous quotations by Mary Shelley:
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!
The beginning is always today.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady pur-
pose.
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it
was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
Learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.
My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they
were my refuge when annoyed – my dearest pleasure when free.
Popular works by Mary Shelley:
History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Mathilda (1819)
Valperga (1823)
Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824)
The Last Man (1826)
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)
Lodore (1835)
127
Falkner (1837)
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839)
Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844)
Useful resources about Shelley:
http://www.biography.com/people/mary-shelley-9481497#later-years
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/frankenstein/mary-shelley-biography
Comprehension assignments:
1. Give the brief summary of Shelley’s life.
2. Highlight the literary styles of the author.
3. Shelley’s most memorable works.
4. Write the brief summary of one of Shelley’s works.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Перси Биши Шелли)
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets of the
19th century, known for his lyrical, epic and long-form verse.
Percy Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Broadbridge Heath, West
Sussex, England. He was the eldest legitimate son of Sir Timothy Shelley,
a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790–1792 and his wife,
Elizabeth Pilford, a Sussex landowner. He had four younger sisters and one
128
much younger brother. He received his early education at home. He had a happy
and contented childhood spent largely in country activities such as fishing and
hunting.
As the oldest of the seven children, Shelley left home at age of 10 to study
at Syon House Academy, in the north of Broadbridge Heath and 10 miles west
of central London. After two years he entered Eton College. Shelley possessed a
keen interest in science at Eton. Shelley would often use a frictional electric
machine to charge the door handle of his room.
While there, he was severely bullied, both physical and mentally, by his
classmates. Surrounded by elder boys, the young Shelley would have his books
torn from his hands and his clothes pulled at and torn as well. This was because
of the refusal to take part in any youthful activities. Because of these
peculiarities he nickname was “Mad Shelley”.
On 10 April 1810 Shelley entered the University College, Oxford. Legend
has it that Shelley attended only one lecture while at Oxford, but frequently read
sixteen hours a day. His first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810),
in which he vented his early atheistic world view through the villain Zastrozzi;
in a year he had published St. Irvyne and Posthumous Fragments of Margaret
Nicholson. In the same year, Shelley, together with his sister Elizabeth,
published Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire.
In 1811 Shelley anonymously published a pamphlet called The Necessity
of Atheism which was brought to the attention of the university administration
and that behavior was resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25 March 1811.
Shelley’s parents were so exasperated by their son’s actions.
In addition to long-form poetry, Shelley also began writing political
pamphlets, which he distributed by way of hot air balloons, glass bottles and
paper boats. In 1812 he met his hero, the radical political philosopher William
Godwin, author of Political Justice.
Four months after being expelled from Oxford, the 19-year-old Shelley
eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook. His father forbidden
to meet Percy with Harriet. However, they married beneath Sir Timothy Shelley
blessing, and the couple was refused to visit Field Place. Harriet also insisted
that her sister Eliza, whom Shelley detested, live with them. Shelley was also at
this time increasingly involved in an intense platonic relationship with Elizabeth
Hitchener, a 28-year-old, unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with
whom he had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the ‟sister of
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my soul” and ‟my second self”, became his muse and confidante in the writing
of his philosophical poem Queen Mab, a Utopian allegory.
Shelley was increasingly unhappy in his marriage to Harriet and
particularly resented the influence of her older sister Eliza, Shelley accused
Harriet of having married him for his money. Although Shelley’s relationship
with Harriet remained troubled, the young couple had two children together.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Ianthe, was born in June of 1813, when Shelley was
21. Before their second child was born, Shelley abandoned his wife and
immediately took up with another young woman. Well-educated and brought up,
his new love was named Mary, the daughter of Shelley’s beloved mentor,
William Godwin. To Shelley’s surprise, Godwin was not in favor of Shelley
dating his daughter. In fact, Godwin so disapproved that he would not speak
with Mary for the next three years. Shelley and Mary fled to Paris, taking
Mary’s sister, Jane, with them. They departed London by ship and, mostly
traveling by foot, toured France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland. When they
returned home, Mary was pregnant. So was Shelley’s wife, Harriet. Harriet’s
second child with Shelley, Charles, was born in November of 1814. Three
months later, Mary gave birth to a girl. The infant died just a few weeks later. In
1816 Mary gave birth to their son, William.
In December of 1816 Shelley and Mary discovered that Harriet committed
suicide. She was found drowned in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London.
A few weeks later, Shelley and Mary finally married. Mary’s father, William
Godwin, was delighted by the news and accepted his daughter back into the
family. On the grounds that Shelley was an atheist he was refused of custody of
his and Harriet’s children.
In 1815 Shelley wrote Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, a 720-line poem,
now recognized as his first great work. That same year, Shelley’s grandfather
passed away and left him an annual allowance of 1,000 British pounds.
The Shelleys took up residence in the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where a friend of Percy’s, Thomas Love Peacock, lived. Shelley took part
in the literary circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met
John Keats. Shelley’s major production during this time was Laon and Cythna;
or, The Revolution of the Golden City, a long narrative poem in which he
attacked religion. It was later edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam in 1818.
Shelley wrote two revolutionary political tracts The Hermit of Marlow.
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