ABSTRACT
One of the most misleading facts that are widely known about Jane Austen is that her life was what is called 'uneventful'. She was born on 16 December 1775, at her father's rectory at Steven ton in Hampshire, the seventh in a family of eight children. Correspondingly, the facts about Jane Austen's life illuminate her art only in so far as we seek in them what is illuminating, not what is glamorous or startling. To understand what the Austen family was like it is worth trying to picture it between 1785 and 1790, at about the time Jane Austen began writing. Jane was no doubt happy if only because she was with Cassandra, 'If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off' wrote Mrs. Austen, 'Jane would insist on sharing her fate', but it may have been Latournelle's enthusiasm for the theatre that impressed her most deeply there.
