She knew and loved this life because, except for one real interval, she lived it; and it may be significant that during that extended interval she was unable to achieve any known completed work. This eight-year period began in 1801 when Mr. Austen gave up the living of Steventon and retired to Bath. After his death in 1805 the mother and daughters moved to Southampton, where they remained until in 1809 they moved to the little town of Chawton. Before 1801, while Jane was still in her early twenties, she had written three unpublished novels: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey. Upon removal to Chawton Cottage she began immediately to write again and, before her death on July 18, 1817, she completed, in order, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. Beginning with the printing of Sense and Sensibility in 1811, each of the six novels was published, the new ones in short order after their completion, some of the works going into second and third, as well as French, editions by the time of her death.
Jane Austen loved the life around her. But she also saw it clearly enough to perceive its imperfections along with its perfections: an insight into the divided nature of things that was to set its imprint of cool liveliness upon every page that she wrote. She was aware, of course, of worldly happenings: the distant thunder of the American and French revolutions, the rise of Napoleon, the industrial revolution, the British maritime mutinies, the overdone peculiarities of Gothic and sentimental novels, the new emotional quality of Romanticism. But most of these historic fluxes did not come even as close as the blank margin of her pages. Instead, she concentrated upon eternal mixed qualities of humanity — of human relationships — exemplified in the provincial society about her. This life she knew intimately, and it was for her enough.
