In 1811, a novel was published anonymously, by an author identified as “A Lady.” It did moderately well for a book of that kind. Little did anyone suspect that this novel would be the start of a literary legacy that would grow over the course of two centuries and cement its author as one of the greatest novelists in the English language.

The novel was Sense and Sensibility, and the unnamed “Lady” was Jane Austen. Born to the ranks of the lower gentry in 1775, Austen led what some have mistakenly described as an ordinary and unremarkable life—a life that ended too early, at the age of 41. But from this life, Austen drew inspiration for six novels that all rank as literary masterpieces, including the widely beloved Pride and Prejudice. So, what do we really know about Austen’s life and influences? What can a better understanding of her historical, cultural, and literary context tell us about how her brilliant work came to rank alongside Shakespeare, Eliot, and Dickens in the pantheon of revered British writers? Why does her work continue to resonate with readers from all walks of life and to inspire theater, film, television, and literary adaptations? Why do her deeply devoted fans continue to make pilgrimages to her home and celebrate her life 200 years after her death?

With Professor Devoney Looser of Arizona State University, you will delve into Austen’s everyday realities in the elegant and tumultuous Regency period and emerge with a more thorough understanding of her influence and lasting legacy. Over the course of the 24 lessons of The Life and Works of Jane Austen, you will explore her six completed works, as well as her raucous teenage writings and unfinished novels. You will also get a guided tour of Austen’s world—the politics, social dynamics, major events, cultural markers, and class structures that defined the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Great Britain and how these elements shaped her life and inspired her work. While a certain amount of mystery about Austen’s life will always exist, this course offers a fuller understanding of her world and how she brilliantly captured it on the page.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Jane Austen’s books were published in the relatively brief period known as the Regency. In order to really understand and appreciate the nuances of novels like Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, it’s necessary to grasp the unique historical and social context of this fascinating period. Throughout the course, you will learn about the individual, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Regency, such as:

• Marriage. Austen’s plots revolve around the marriages of her heroines because marriage was the only tool that many educated women had at their disposal for financial security and personal comfort. Love matches and companionate marriage were becoming the norm in Austen’s day, though matrimony was still very much a practical, social, and economic concern for people of all classes.
• Social Hierarchy. Understanding the subtleties of social class and the finer points of interpersonal relationships in the Regency is vital to a thorough appreciation of how Austen’s characters interact with one another and participate in their tight-knit communities. And Austen’s razor-sharp humor relies on an understanding of subtle (and not-so-subtle) social cues of the time.
• Money and Ownership. Many of Austen’s characters openly discuss the incomes of perfect strangers, something that may seem odd to modern readers. But money, ownership, and inheritance were determining factors not just in terms of social class, but they also played a crucial role in courtship and relationships. Many of Austen’s plots center on heroines whose lack of access to wealth or property dramatically affects the ways they are able to participate in the world.
• Politics. Austen’s considerations of the political upheavals of her time are filtered through the lens of everyday life. As the sister of naval officers who saw action during the Napoleonic Wars, and as the youngest daughter of a clergyman of limited means, Austen was profoundly aware of current events. Her fiction reflects this through her characters’ experiences, in techniques that are, by turns, subtle and overt.

The insight Professor Looser provides into these contexts should enhance your experience of Jane Austen’s novels, as well as expand your ability to understand and appreciate the literature, history, and social dimensions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries more broadly.

Two Inches of Ivory

In a letter to her niece, Jane Austen offered the writing advice that “three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.” This small, domestic scale defined the parameters of Austen’s work and reflected part of her own reality. Yet within this workspace—what she once referred to as “two inches of ivory, on which I work with so fine a brush”—Austen captured a broad range of experience through her heroines and her cast of vividly realized characters.

The Regency setting and close, personal scope of her stories have fooled many a would-be reader into believing that Austen wrote sedate, ladylike romances centered on the marriages at the end of her novels. But what often goes overlooked is Austen’s comedy—her sharp, satirical eye picks apart the highly stratified society she so sharply observes. Even her most ridiculous characters still read as true to life today. As you will see in Austen’s letters, her biting critique of the rakes, snobs, and fools that populate her fiction were fodder for gossip and ridicule in her own life as well.

And although some critics have argued that Austen conspicuously left some of the most pressing events and issues of her day out of her fiction, you will discover how often these inescapable realities affected her life and did, in fact, find their way into her work. Whether she was touching obliquely on something as serious as the impact of the Napoleonic Wars in Pride and Prejudice and in Persuasion, or more directly—and lovingly—poking fun at the popular fiction of the day in Northanger Abbey, Austen’s fiction is deeply informed by her own experiences and world events.

Austen’s work was shaped profoundly by the world she lived in. The Life and Works of Jane Austen offers you the chance to explore this world and to see how the novels Austen published over two centuries ago continue to engage and entertain readers, and to influence popular culture through countless adaptations on page and screen. Whether you are a fan, a casual reader, or even someone who has always been a little confused by “Austenmania,” this course will illuminate the worlds, both real and imagined, of Austen’s astonishing contributions to literature.