Introduction

Abstract

Since Jane Austen’s life plays out in national and international popular culture like a reality show, the outsider would be surprised to learn that there is an abundance of information about the author that is lost in history forever. With all the attention that Austen receives, one might think that we know every minute detail about her life. On the contrary, much of Austen’s personal history is irretrievable simply because of her gender—she was a woman writing in a man’s world, a patriarchal empire that did not pay much attention to what women did or said. At the time of her death, she was a known author, but an obscure one at best; she belonged to no writing circles, she had no celebrity status, and she published her books anonymously under the pseudonym “A Lady.” We also know that she was not well traveled. She was born in Steventon, Hampshire, moved to Bath and then Southampton, vacationed for a bit with her family at Lyme Regis, journeyed once with her mother and sister to Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire; on occasion, she visited London, and then spent her final years in Chawton, Hampshire. The distance between the author’s birthplace and these other stops on her life’s journey is nowhere greater than 126 miles. In her essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf acknowledges Austen’s severely limited sphere of mobility, stating, “If Jane Austen suffered in any way from her circumstances it was in the narrowness of life that was imposed upon her.