Jane Austen’s family
What were the origins of Jane Austen’s family?
Who were Jane Austen’s parents?
How many siblings did Jane Austen have?
What role did Jane Austen’s brothers play in her life and work?
How did Jane Austen’s family values influence their lifestyle?
Anna Austen Lefroy, Jane Austen’s beloved niece and a budding writer of the 1800s, once received her aunt’s advice on the setting of a story she had been writing: “Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on...” But what kind of family did Austen herself belong to? How much of their quirks and customs found their way into the households she so vividly imagined? In Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, for example, the action unfolds almost entirely within the social orbit of Highbury, a fictional village peopled by such an interlinked circle.
Origin and ancestry
Austen’s family joined two English lineages—the Austens of Kent, a family of clothiers (textile manufacturers) who had risen to become country gentry (a landowning family), and the Leighs of Adlestrop, a clerical family (Anglican Christians) descended from Sir Thomas Leigh, Lord Mayor of London under Queen Elizabeth I. The 1764 marriage of George Austen and Cassandra Leigh (Jane’s parents) brought these lines together in a household of eight children raised at Steventon rectory in Hampshire, southern England. Jane was their seventh child.
The family line includes William Austen, a surgeon. Jane’s novels are peopled with surgeons and apothecaries such as Mr. Perry in Emma (1815) and Mr. Robinson in Persuasion (1817).
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William and his wife, Rebecca Walter, had several children, among them George Austen, who would become Jane’s father. One of William’s aunts married into the Stringer family, whose descendants included the Knights of Godmersham.
Through this distant kinship, Edward Austen, one of Jane’s brothers, came to be adopted into the Knight family and eventually inherited the estates of Godmersham Park in Kent and Chawton House in Hampshire; the latter estate includes Jane Austen’s House, her residence for the final eight years of her life.
One branch of Jane’s maternal family settled at Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, the other at Adlestrop in Gloucestershire. Cassandra Leigh, Jane’s mother, came from the Adlestrop line. Her uncle Theophilus Leigh was Master of Balliol College, Oxford University.
George Austen and Cassandra Leigh
George Austen (born in 1731) attended Tonbridge School and St. John’s College, Oxford. In 1761 he was appointed rector of Steventon in Hampshire. He married Cassandra Leigh on April 26, 1764, at Walcot Church in Bath. Interestingly, the couple had an unusual companion on their brief honeymoon trip from Bath to Steventon: George Hastings, son of Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of Bengal in India (1772–85). George Hastings had been placed under George Austen’s charge, possibly on recommendation by George Austen’s sister Philadelphia, as early as 1761.
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The couple settled at Steventon rectory, where they raised their children. Hosting pupils and farming brought in supplemental income. George Austen was a devoted family man and a scholar. Cassandra managed the household and was known for her sense of humor and high energy.
Jane Austen and her siblings
The eight Austen children likely made up a bustling household at Steventon. The six sons were educated at home, with several of them later attending university or entering the naval service. Jane and her sister were sent to school when they were quite young, first to Oxford and Southampton under the care of a family connection, and in 1785, to the Abbey School in Reading, a celebrated institution of the time. They completed the rest of their education at home, a common practice in 18th-century households.
The Austen children
James Austen (1765–1819) was a clergyman and Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. While there, he founded and contributed essays to the periodical The Loiterer (January 31, 1789–March 20, 1790). It was modeled after The Spectator, a British periodical published by essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison from 1711 to 1712.
George Austen (1766–1838) possibly suffered from epilepsy, and he lived apart from the family. He joined his maternal uncle Thomas Leigh, who had a similar condition, at the Culham family home in Monk Sherborne, and remained under their care.
Edward Austen (Knight) (1767–1852) was noted for his business acumen and his spirited nature. He was adopted by wealthy relatives, Thomas and Catherine Knight, of Godmersham Park in Kent. He later took their surname and inherited their estates at Godmersham and Chawton, where he provided a home for his mother and sisters in 1809.
Henry Austen (1771–1850), Jane’s “favorite brother”, was a militia officer, banker, and later a clergyman. He was known for his good looks and energy. In 1797 Henry married Eliza de Feuillide, his widowed cousin. Eliza was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, where her father worked for the East India Company, and later lived in pre-revolutionary France, where her first husband, a French officer, was executed. Henry was Jane’s first biographer, contributing the “Biographical Notice of the Author” accompanying her posthumously published novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in 1817. It was the only public account of her life until A Memoir of Jane Austen appeared in 1870.
Cassandra Austen (1773–1845), Jane’s only sister, was her closest companion. She was engaged to Thomas Fowle, who died of yellow fever in the West Indies before the wedding could take place. Subsequently, she never married and helped care for Jane in her final years. Cassandra also made one of the most consequential decisions regarding her sister’s legacy. While many of Jane’s letters survived, most of the ones written to Cassandra were destroyed by the latter. Cassandra did so because, according to Jane’s grand-nephew William Austen-Leigh and his nephew Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, the Austens had a “great hatred and dread of publicity.” To Cassandra, Jane’s memory was too cherished and private to be exposed to the curiosity of strangers.
We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy, and a future companion.
So wrote the Reverend George Austen on December 17, 1775, in a letter to his sister-in-law, breaking the news of Jane’s birth the previous day at Steventon rectory. He added that the child would be called “Jenny.”
George Austen’s affectionate phrase, half teasing, half prophetic, was proven strikingly true. Jane and her elder sister Cassandra grew up to share a bond so close that their mother would remark: “if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”
Francis Austen (1774–1865) and Charles Austen (1779–1852) joined the Royal Navy. Both of Jane’s “sailor brothers” served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and eventually attained the rank of Admiral. Austen’s portrayal of naval life in Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817) is often seen as a tribute to her brothers’ patriotism.
In Mansfield Park she even drew on their real commands, mentioning two of Francis’s ships, the Canopus and the Elephant, and two of Charles’s, the Endymion and the Cleopatra.
Jane Austen (1775–1817), the seventh child, received some formal education in Oxford, Southampton, and Reading but was primarily taught at home. Her literary talent was encouraged by her father and brothers. In the late 1780s and early 1790s, Jane wrote a number of satirical sketches such as Evelyn, Kitty, or the Bower, and Jack and Alice, which show her early talent and sharp humor. Her father first attempted to secure a publisher for her novel Pride and Prejudice (initially titled First Impressions) in 1797.
Jane Austen’s nieces and nephews
Jane was an aunt to more than thirty nieces and nephews. She maintained a close bond with several, including Anna, Caroline, and James Edward Austen-Leigh, the children of her eldest brother, James. She offered Anna feedback on a novel-in-progress and teased her about her new husband, Ben Lefroy. To Caroline, she wrote admiringly of her storytelling.
James Edward later authored A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870) in which he recalled that Jane was the “delight of all her nephews and nieces.” She also corresponded with Fanny Knight, the eldest daughter of Edward Knight, whom she considered “almost another sister”.
Jane occasionally made sharp judgments about the children’s behavior and upbringing, particularly that of Cassandra Esten Austen (“Cassy”), her brother Charles’s daughter: “Nature has done enough for her—but Method has been wanting;…She will really be a very pleasing Child, if they will only exert themselves a little.” Jane’s letters on the subject offer a candid glimpse of an aunt who loved deeply yet observed keenly.
Family values and leisure
The Austens exemplified the values of their time: education, religious duty, and family service. But they also cultivated creativity and play.
At Steventon rectory, the family staged ambitious amateur theatricals in the barn during summer and in the dining room during winter, performing plays including one by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irish playwright known for late 18th-century comedies such as The School for Scandal.
In August 1799 Jane’s aunt Mrs. Leigh Perrot was accused of stealing a card of lace from a shop in Bath—a charge that shocked the Austen family. She remained in confinement for nearly seven months before her trial at Taunton, where she was quickly acquitted after jury deliberation. The family believed the case was a setup, possibly orchestrated for blackmail by associates of the struggling shopkeeper.
The Austens loved reading aloud to each other, a practice fondly remembered by one of Jane’s nieces. The Austen brothers also engaged in more physically adventurous pursuits, often on borrowed ponies or on foot, and occasionally invented boyish schemes, such as a youthful Francis Austen selling a pony named Squirrel for profit.
The ethos behind the Austen household likely echoed the words of Jane’s great-grandmother Elizabeth Austen (née Weller), who once wrote that with a good education, her children might manage better in life despite the small fortune left to them.