Questions to ask Jane Austen

Jane Austen's life in the dates you will need

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon rectory in Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. She died in Winchester on 18 July 1817, aged 41, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. Her gravestone praises her character and does not mention that she wrote novels.

• 1787 to 1793: writes the comic notebooks now called the juvenilia, read aloud to the family.
• 1797: her father offers First Impressions (the first version of Pride and Prejudice) to the publisher Thomas Cadell, who declines it without reading it.
• 1801 to 1809: the family moves to Bath; her father dies in January 1805; then Southampton.
• 1802: accepts a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither and withdraws her acceptance the next morning.
• 1809: settles at Chawton cottage, lent by her brother Edward Knight. Every novel is revised or written here.
• 1811: Sense and Sensibility, “By a Lady”.
• 1813: Pride and Prejudice (January). 1814: Mansfield Park. December 1815: Emma, dedicated to the Prince Regent.
• 1817: dies; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion appear in December with a notice by her brother Henry that names her for the first time.

Before you write: three rules for an Austen interview

First, separate her from her narrators. “It is a truth universally acknowledged” is the narrator of Pride and Prejudice being ironic, and many lines on mugs and posters are spoken by characters. Second, separate her from the films. The 1995 BBC Darcy in a wet shirt does not come from the book. Third, remember the gaps: Cassandra burned or cut many letters after Jane's death, so on love and illness the record is thin, and a good interview admits that.

For a wax museum, the 1813 Jane works well: 37, at Chawton, with Pride and Prejudice just out and Mansfield Park nearly finished. For a book report interview, choose the questions about the novel you read and add one from each of the other groups. Our guide to checking whether a quote is real helps with the many fake Austen quotes online.

Childhood, family and the rectory at Steventon

What a good answer contains: a large, noisy, bookish household; her father took in boy pupils to make money; the family put on plays in the barn; she had only a short spell at boarding school in Reading (1785 to 1786) and was otherwise taught at home and in her father's library. Her brothers Francis and Charles went into the Royal Navy and both became admirals.

1. What did your family read aloud in the evenings?
2. Your early notebooks mock the romantic novels of the day. Who were you making fun of?
3. What was it like to grow up in a house full of your father's boy pupils?
4. Your brothers were naval officers during the wars with France. How did their letters reach you, and what did they tell you?

Publishing, anonymity and money

What a good answer contains: Sense and Sensibility was published by Thomas Egerton at her own risk and earned her about £140. She sold the copyright of Pride and Prejudice outright for £110, so Egerton kept the profits of its later editions. A publisher, Crosby, bought an early novel called Susan in 1803 for £10 and never printed it; it became Northanger Abbey. Her brother Henry acted as her agent and could not resist telling people who the author was.

1. Why did you publish as “A Lady” rather than under your name?
2. Do you regret selling the copyright of Pride and Prejudice for £110?
3. Why did Crosby buy Susan and then sit on it for years?
4. How did you feel when Henry kept giving away your secret?
5. How much did you need to earn to feel independent?

Love, marriage and why she stayed single

What a good answer contains: a flirtation with Tom Lefroy in 1795 to 1796, which his family ended; the Bigg-Wither proposal of December 1802, which would have made her rich, accepted and withdrawn overnight; and her advice to her niece Fanny Knight in November 1814 that anything was to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection. Cassandra's own fiancé died in 1797, and the two sisters lived together for the rest of Jane's life.

1. What happened with Tom Lefroy?
2. Why did you say yes to Harris Bigg-Wither and no the next morning?
3. You told Fanny not to marry without love. Was that easy advice for a woman with no money of her own?
4. Your heroines all marry. Did you think marriage was the only good ending?

Her craft and her opinions of other writers

What a good answer contains: in Northanger Abbey (chapter 5) she defends novels against people who sneer at them and praises Frances Burney's Cecilia and Camilla and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda. In a letter of December 1816 to her nephew James Edward she compares her work to painting on a little piece of ivory two inches wide with a fine brush. She disliked the Prince Regent (letter to Martha Lloyd, February 1813) yet dedicated Emma to him when his librarian made it clear the dedication was expected.

1. Why did you defend the novel in Northanger Abbey, when many people thought novels were trash?
2. What did you mean by the little piece of ivory?
3. How did you feel about dedicating Emma to a prince you disliked?
4. Which heroine is most like you, and which is least?
5. Why do your novels almost never show two men talking without a woman present?

Her world: war, the navy and slavery

What a good answer contains: she wrote through the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (1793 to 1815), and Persuasion is full of naval officers. Mansfield Park's Sir Thomas Bertram owns an estate in Antigua. Her father had been a trustee of an Antiguan plantation, and in a letter of 24 January 1813 she mentions that she had once been in love with the writing of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Historians still debate how far Mansfield Park criticises slavery.

1. Fanny Price asks Sir Thomas about the slave trade and is met with silence. What did you intend by that silence?
2. What did you admire in Thomas Clarkson's writing?

Sample answers in her own words

Every line here comes from a dated letter in the published collections. Pair each one with a question and you have the core of a script.

Question: You seem hard to impress. Do you like meeting new people?

Question: Why do your heroines worry so much about marrying well?

Question: What did you make of London?

Question: How did you greet family news?

Notice the tone. She is joking in all four, so in performance the delivery should be dry, not solemn.

Questions she could not answer

• Anything about Mr Darcy's wet shirt or other film scenes: there is no such scene in her book.
• Her fame. She published anonymously and would be startled to be called a famous author.
• Her portrait on the Bank of England £10 note, issued in 2017.
• Regency romance as a genre, or television series set in her period.
• If your interview is set in 1813: Emma and Persuasion, which she had not yet written.

Her illness is a fair question only if your interview is set in 1816 or 1817. Historians still argue over the cause of her death; Addison's disease and a lymphoma are the two best known suggestions.

Where to read Jane Austen's own words

All six novels and The Letters of Jane Austen (the 1884 Brabourne selection) are free on Project Gutenberg. Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, a project of Oxford and King's College London, shows her handwritten drafts, including the cancelled chapters of Persuasion. Wikisource has the novels and the 1870 Memoir by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. For a modern edition of the letters, use Deirdre Le Faye's.

To practise asking questions aloud, you can talk to Yuga's Jane Austen, an AI recreation built from her novels and letters. It is a rehearsal partner, not Jane Austen, and it can be wrong, so cite the letters themselves in your project. To compare her with the other great English novelist of the century, read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens compared and our questions to ask Charles Dickens.