Becoming Jane Austen: the early years of a writer in 18th-century Hampshire

Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of English literature's most-read authors, gave the world novels including Pride and Prejudice (1813), Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Emma (1815) that have drawn millions of readers across centuries. But the formative years that enabled the writer to create these six novels have received insufficient attention in literary history. A new podcast series on HistoryExtra, presented by historian Lizzie Rogers and titled 'Becoming Jane Austen', tries to fill that gap.

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in Steventon, a small village in Hampshire in the south of England. Her father George Austen was the village's Anglican parson; her mother Cassandra Leigh was a member of an old aristocratic family. The family had a broad structure with nine children: seven boys and two girls; Jane was the second-to-youngest. The parson's house was both the family home and the private boarding school by which George Austen earned income.

Rogers's research bases Jane Austen's early education on two main sources: her father's extensive library (about 500 volumes) and the family's daily 'reading evenings'. The Austen family's after-dinner routine was for family members to read aloud in rotation. This routine continued through Jane's adolescence and made her deeply familiar with 18th-century novel style -- with authors such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson and Frances Burney. Burney's novel Evelina, published in 1778, was a particularly important reference for the young Jane.

Jane's earliest writings were collected in the 'Juvenilia' (Youthful Writings) collection that began at age 11 (1786). This handwritten collection -- preserved today at Oxford's Bodleian Library -- contains short parodies, novels in letter form and drama experiments. An important part of Rogers's analysis is on lines showing that these Juvenilia texts laid the basis for the novels of her adult years. The 1790 early parody 'Love and Friendship' anticipated the characteristic humour and irony tone later seen in Pride and Prejudice.

Jane's closest human relationship was with her sister Cassandra (1773-1845). The two sisters exchanged thousands of letters with each other across their lives -- the vast majority of about 161 surviving Jane Austen letters today were written to Cassandra. After Jane's death, Cassandra burned many of the letters -- most likely to protect personal details -- but the survivors reveal Jane's daily observations, social criticism and humour. Rogers's podcast emphasises the role of these letters as practical writing training prior to literature.

The year 1796 stands out as the year that closes Jane's formative period. That year, the 20-year-old Jane began writing the early draft of Pride and Prejudice, then titled 'First Impressions'. The same year, she formed a romantic connection with a young Irishman, Tom Lefroy, a relative of the family; the short-lived relationship with Lefroy laid the substrate for the bachelor-wealth-marriage complexity in her later novels. When this relationship ended -- Lefroy's family rejected the relationship on financial grounds -- Jane's writing focus turned toward literature.

Part of Rogers's research re-evaluates the social conditions of women's authorship in 18th-century England. About 25% of novels published in that period were written by women; but most were published 'anonymously' or 'by a Lady'. Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was also first published in 1811 under the signature 'By a Lady'; her name was not made public until 1816. The reason for that anonymity was both 18th-century social norms and personal privacy preference.

Jane's daily life during the Steventon years became material for her later novels. Provincial life in Hampshire -- village dances, trips with cousins, church services, visits to neighbouring families -- directly entered the atmosphere of novels such as Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817). In her podcast Rogers discusses surviving sketches of the now-demolished Steventon Rectory and family letters; these digitised records have been publicly available in the Hampshire County Council archive since 2024.

The family left Steventon in 1801 and moved to Bath. Her father's retirement was the main reason for the decision. The move was traumatic for Jane; Steventon, both her birthplace and the place where she had begun to write, had formed a deep bond with her. The writing pause that followed in the Bath period (1801-1806) is also thought to have stemmed from this; Jane did not complete a new novel during those years and left the 'Watsons' project, started in Steventon, unfinished. Her productivity resumed when she moved to Chawton, in Hampshire, in 1809.

The aim of Rogers's podcast series is to move Jane Austen out of the 'born-genius' narrative and present her as a writer placed in a social-historical context, having passed through her own formative process and shaped by family and community dynamics. 'Becoming Jane Austen' aims to understand Austen's literary achievements not only through the novels but also through the social structure that turned her into the person able to write them. The five episodes of the podcast will be released weekly from May to September 2026 and will be accessible through HistoryExtra's paid membership platform.