Jane Austen | Calm Bedtime Reading For Sleep

Drift off with calm bedtime reading about Jane Austen to help you sleep through insomnia. This calm bedtime reading session invites sleep and offers relief from insomnia as you gently unwind with her story. Tonight, we explore the life and literary legacy of one of England’s most beloved novelists, discovering the world behind Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in a slow, peaceful way.

You will learn about her early years, her writing process, and the quiet determination that shaped her timeless works, all while listening to Benjamin’s steady, soothing cadence. There is no whispering, just calm, fact-filled reading designed to ease stress, soften anxiety, and support those facing sleeplessness. Let this gentle educational journey quiet your thoughts, slow your breathing, and carry you toward rest. Press play, get comfortable, and allow yourself to drift off.

Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about Jane Austen.

Jane Austen,

December 16th,

1775 to July 18th,

1817,

Was an English writer known primarily for her six novels,

Which implicitly interpret,

Critique,

And comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.

Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security.

Her works are implicit critiques of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th century literary realism.

Her use of social commentary,

Realism,

Wit,

And irony have earned her acclaim amongst critics and scholars.

Austen wrote major novels before the age of 22,

But she was not published until she was 35.

The anonymously published Sense and Sensibility,

1811,

Pride and Prejudice,

1813,

Mansfield Park,

1814,

And Emma,

1816,

Were moderate successes,

But they did not bring her public fame in her lifetime.

She was privately known to be the author of these novels,

Including by notable people such as the Prince Regent.

She wrote two other novels,

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion,

Both published posthumously in 1817,

And began another,

Eventually titled Sanditon,

But it was left unfinished on her death.

She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings and manuscript,

The short epistolary novel Lady Susan and the unfinished novel The Watsons.

Since her death,

Austen's novels have rarely been out of print.

A significant transition in her reputation occurred in 1833,

When they were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series,

Illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering,

And sold as a set.

They gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership.

In 1869,

Her nephew published A Memoir of Jane Austen.

Her work has inspired a large number of critical essays and has been included in many literary anthologies.

Her novels have been adapted in numerous films,

Including Pride and Prejudice,

1940,

Sense and Sensibility,

1995,

Pride and Prejudice,

2005,

Emma,

2020,

And an adaptation of Lady Susan,

Love and Friendship,

2016.

As well as the film Persuasion and the miniseries Pride and Prejudice,

Both released in 1995 by the BBC.

The scant biographical information about Austen comes from her surviving letters and a number of sketches her family members and contemporaries wrote about her.

Only about 160 of the approximately 3,

000 letters Austen would have written in the course of her lifetime have survived and been published.

It is believed that Cassandra Austen destroyed the bulk of the letters she received from her sister,

By burning or otherwise.

One theory is that she wanted to ensure that the younger niece did not read any of Jane's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbors or family members.

In the interest of protecting reputations from Jane's penchant for honesty and forthrightness,

Cassandra,

It is surmised,

May have omitted details of illnesses,

Unhappiness,

And anything she considered unsavory.

It is certainly the case that important details about her life and the actions of the Austen family were deliberately omitted,

Such as any mention of Austen's brother George,

Whose undiagnosed developmental challenges led the family to have him raised away from its home.

As was common for the time,

Or of wealthy Aunt Jane Lee Perot,

Who was arrested,

Tried,

And acquitted on charges of grand larceny.

The first Austen biography was her brother Henry Thomas Austen's 1818 biographical notice.

It appeared in a posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey,

And included extracts from two letters,

Apparently published against the judgment of other family members.

Details of Austen's life continued to be omitted or embellished in her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen,

Published in 1869,

And in William and Richard Arthur Austen Lee's biography,

Jane Austen,

Her Life in Letters,

Published in 1913,

All of which included additional letters.

Austen's family and relatives built a legend of good,

Quiet Aunt Jane,

Portraying her as a woman in a happy domestic situation,

Whose family was the mainstay of her life.

Critics have long taken issue with the depiction of a mild Austen.

Modern biographers include details excised from the letters and family biographies,

But the biographer Jan Fergus writes that the challenge is to keep the view balanced,

Not to present her languishing in periods of deep unhappiness as an embittered,

Disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family.

Jane Austen was born on December 16,

1775,

In Steventon,

Hampshire.

Her father,

George Austen,

1731-1805,

Wrote of her arrival in a letter that her mother,

Cassandra,

Certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago.

The winter of 1775-76 was particularly harsh,

And it was not until April 5 that she was baptized at the local church and christened Jane.

George served as the rector of the Anglican parish of Steventon and Dean.

The Rev.

Austen came from an old and wealthy family of wool merchants.

As each generation of eldest sons received inheritances,

George's branch of the family fell into poverty.

He and his two sisters were orphaned as children,

And had to be taken in by relatives.

In 1745,

At the age of 15,

George's sister Philadelphia was apprenticed to a milliner in Covent Garden.

At the age of 16,

George entered St.

John's College,

Oxford,

Where he most likely met Cassandra Lee,

1739-1827.

She came from the prominent Lee family.

Her father was rector at All Souls College,

Oxford,

Where she grew up among the gentry.

Her eldest brother James inherited a fortune and large estate from his great-aunt Perot,

And the only condition that he change his name to Lee Perot.

George Austen and Cassandra Lee were engaged,

Probably around 1763,

When they exchanged miniatures.

He receiving the living of the Steventon parish from Thomas Knight,

The wealthy husband of his second cousin.

They married on April 26,

1764,

At St.

Swithin's Church in Bath,

By license,

In a simple ceremony,

Two months after Cassandra's father died.

Their income was modest,

With George's small per annum living.

Cassandra brought to the marriage the expectation of a small inheritance at the time of her mother's death.

After the living at the nearby Dean Rectory had been purchased for George by his wealthy uncle Francis Austen.

The Austens took up temporary residence there until Steventon Rectory,

A 16th-century house in disrepair,

Underwent necessary renovations.

Cassandra gave birth to three children while living at Dean.

James in 1765,

George in 1766,

And Edward in 1767.

Her custom was to keep an infant at home for several months,

And then place it with Elizabeth Littlewood,

A woman living nearby to nurse and raise for 12 to 18 months.

In 1768,

The family finally took up residence in Steventon.

Henry was the first child to be born there in 1771.

At about this time,

Cassandra could no longer ignore the signs that little George was developmentally disabled.

He had seizures and may have been deaf and mute.

At this time,

She chose to send him to be fostered.

In 1773,

Cassandra was born,

Followed by Francis in 1774,

And Jane in 1775.

According to the biographer Park Honan,

The Austen home had an open,

Amused,

Easily intellectual atmosphere in which the ideas of those with whom members of the Austen family might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed.

The family relied on the patronage of their kin and hosted visits from numerous family members.

The elder Cassandra spent the summer of 1770 in London with George's sister Philadelphia and her daughter Eliza,

Accompanied by his other sister Mrs.

Walter and her daughter Philly.

Philadelphia and Eliza Hancock were,

According to Le Fay,

The bright comets flashing into an otherwise placid solar system of clerical life in rural Hampshire.

And the news of their foreign travels and fashionable London life,

Together with their sudden descents upon the Steventon household in between times,

All helped to widen Jane's youthful horizon and influence her later life and works.

Cassandra Austen's cousin,

Thomas Lee,

Visited a number of times in the 1770s and 1780s,

Inviting young Cassie to visit them in Bath in 1781.

The first mention of Jane occurs in family documents upon her return,

And almost home they were when they met Jane and Charles,

The two little ones of the family,

Who had to go as far as New Down to meet the chase and have the pleasure of writing him in it.

Le Fay writes that Mr.

Austen's predictions for his younger daughter were fully justified.

Never were sisters more each other than Cassandra and Jane.

While in a particularly affectionate family,

There seems to have been a special link between Cassandra and Edward on the one hand,

And between Harry and Jane on the other.

From 1773 until 1796,

George supplemented his income by farming and by teaching three or four boys at a time,

Who boarded at his home.

He had an annual income of 200 pounds,

Equivalent to 32,

000 pounds in 2023 from his two livings.

This was a very modest income at the time.

By comparison,

A skilled worker like a blacksmith or a carpenter could make about 100 pounds annually,

While the typical annual income of a gentry family was between 1,

000 pounds and 5,

000 pounds.

He also rented the 200-acre Cheesedown farm from his benefactor Thomas Knight,

Which could make a profit of 300 pounds,

Equivalent to 48,

000 pounds in 2023 a year.

During this period of her life,

Jane attended church regularly,

Socialized with friends and neighbors,

And read novels,

Often of her own composition,

Aloud to her family in the evenings.

Socializing with the neighbors often meant dancing,

Either impromptu in someone's home after supper or at the balls held regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall.

Her brother Henry later said that Jane was fond of dancing,

And excellent in it.

In 1783,

Austin and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Anne Colley,

Who took them to Southampton later that year.

That autumn,

Both girls were sent home after catching typhus,

Of which Jane nearly died.

She was from then home-educated,

Until she attended boarding school with her sister from early in 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School,

Ruled by Mrs.

La Tournelle.

The curriculum probably included French,

Spelling,

Needlework,

Dancing,

Music and drama.

The sisters returned home before December 1786 because school fees for the two girls were too high for the Austin family.

After 1786,

Austin never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family environment.

Her education came from reading,

Guided by her father and brothers,

James and Henry.

Irene Collins said that Austin used some of the same schoolbooks as the boys.

Austin apparently had unfettered access both to her father's library and that of a family friend,

Warren Hastings.

Together these collections amounted to a large and varied library.

Her father was also tolerant of Austin's sometimes risqué experiments in writing and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing.

Private theatricals were an essential part of Austin's education.

From her early childhood,

The family and friends staged a series of plays in the Rectory Barn,

Including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals,

1775,

And David Garrick's Bon Temps.

Austin's eldest brother,

James,

Wrote the prologues and epilogues and she probably joined in these activities,

First as a spectator and later as a participant.

Most of the plays were comedies,

Which suggests how Austin's satirical gifts were cultivated.

At the age of 12,

She tried her own hand at dramatic writing.

She wrote three short plays during her teenage years.

From at least the time she was aged 11,

Austin wrote poems and stories to amuse herself and her family.

She exaggerated mundane details of daily life and parodied common plot devices in stories full of anarchic fantasies of female power,

License,

Illicit behavior,

And general high spirits,

According to Janet Todd.

Austin compiled fair copies of 29 early works from 1787 to 1793 into three bound notebooks with 90,

000 words,

Now known as the Juvenilia.

Named Volume I,

Volume II,

And Volume III.

The Juvenilia are often,

According to the scholar Richard Jenkins,

Boisterous and anarchic.

He compares them to the work of the 18th century novelist Lawrence Stern.

Among these works is a satirical novel in letters titled Love and Friendship,

Written when aged 14 in 1790,

In which she mocked popular novels of sensibility.

The next year she wrote The History of England,

A manuscript of 34 pages accompanied by 13 watercolor miniatures by her sister Cassandra.

Austin's history parodied popular historical writing,

Particularly Oliver Goldsmith's History of England,

1764.

Honan speculates that not long after writing Love and Friendship,

Austin decided to write for profit,

To make stories her central effort,

That is,

To become a professional writer.

When she was around 18 years old,

Austin began to write longer,

More sophisticated works.

In August 1792,

Aged 17,

Austin started Catherine or the Bower,

Which presaged her mature work,

Especially Northanger Abbey,

But was left unfinished until picked up in Lady Susan,

Which Todd describes as less prefiguring than Catherine.

A year later she began,

But abandoned,

A short play later titled Sir Charles Grandison or The Happy Man,

A comedy in six acts,

Which she returned to and completed around 1800.

This was a short parody of various school textbook abridgments of Austin's favorite contemporary novel,

The History of Sir Charles Grandison,

1753,

By Samuel Richardson.

When Austin became an aunt for the first time,

Aged 18,

She sent her newborn niece Fanny Catherine Austin Knight five short pieces of the juvenilia,

Now known collectively as scraps,

Purporting to be her opinions and admonitions on the conduct of young women.

For Jane Anna Elizabeth Austin,

Also born in 1793,

Her aunt wrote two more miscellaneous morsels,

Dedicating them to Anna on June 2,

1793,

Convinced that if you seriously attended to them,

You will derive from them very important instructions with regard to your conduct in life.

There is manuscript evidence that Austin continued to work on these pieces as late as 1811,

When she was 36,

And that her niece and nephew Anna and James Edwards Austin made further additions as late as 1814.

Between 1793 and 1795,

Aged 18 and 20,

Austin wrote Lady Susan,

A short epistolary novel,

Usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.

It is unlike any of Austin's other works.

Austin's biographer Claire Tomlin describes the novella's heroine as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate,

Betray,

And abuse her lovers,

Friends,

And family.

Tomlin writes,

Told in letters,

It is as neatly plotted as a play and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who have provided some of her inspiration.

It stands alone in Austin's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.

According to Janet Todd,

The model for the title character may have been Eliza de Fouad,

Who inspired Austin with stories of her glamorous life and various adventures.

When Austin was 20,

Tom LaFroy,

A neighbor,

Visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796.

He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London for training as a barrister.

LaFroy and Austin would have been introduced at a ball or other neighborhood social gathering,

And it is clear from Austin's letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together.

I'm almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved.

Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.

Austin wrote in her first surviving letter to her sister Cassandra that LaFroy was a very gentleman-like,

Good-looking,

Pleasant young man.

Five days later,

In another letter,

Austin wrote that she expected an offer from her friend and that I shall refuse him,

However,

Unless he promises to give away his white coat,

Going on to write,

I will confide myself in the future of Mr.

Tom LaFroy,

For whom I don't give a sixpence and refuse all others.

The next day,

Austin wrote,

The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom LaFroy,

And when you receive this,

It will all be over.

My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea.

Halperin cautioned that Austin often satirized popular sentimental romantic fiction in her letters,

And some of her statements about LaFroy may have been ironic.

However,

It is clear that Austin was genuinely attracted to LaFroy,

And subsequently,

None of her other suitors ever quite measured up to him.

The LaFroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January.

Marriage was impractical,

As both LaFroy and Austin must have known.

Neither had any money,

And he was dependent on a great uncle in Ireland.

To finance his education and establish his legal career.

If LaFroy later visited Hampshire,

He was carefully kept away from the Austins,

And Jane never saw him again.

In November 1798,

LaFroy was still on Austin's mind.

As she wrote to her sister,

She had tea with one of his relatives,

Wanted desperately to ask about him,

But could not bring herself to raise the subject.

After finishing Lady Susan,

Austin began her first full-length novel,

Eleanor and Marianne.

Her sister remembered that it was read to the family before 1796,

And was told through a series of letters.

Without surviving original manuscripts,

There's no way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel,

Published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.

Austin began a second novel,

First Impressions,

Later published as Pride and Prejudice,

In 1796.

She completed the initial draft in August 1797,

Age 21.

As with all of her novels,

Austin read the work aloud to her family as she was working on it,

And it became an established favorite.

At this time,

Her father made the first attempt to publish one of her novels.

In November 1797,

He wrote to Thomas Cadell,

An established publisher in London,

To ask if he would consider publishing First Impressions.

Cadell returned George's letter,

Marking it declined by a return of post.

Jane may not have known of her father's efforts.

Following the completion of First Impressions,

Austin returned to Eleanor and Marianne,

And from 1797 until mid-1798,

Revised it heavily.

She eliminated the epistolary format in favor of third-person narration,

And produced something close to Sense and Sensibility.

During the middle of 1798,

After finishing revisions of Eleanor and Marianne,

Austin began writing a third novel with the working title Susan,

Later Northanger Abbey,

A satire on the popular Gothic novel.

Austin completed her work about a year later.

In early 1803,

Henry Austin offered Susan to Benjamin Crosby,

A London publisher,

Who paid ten pounds for the copyright.

Crosby promised early publication and went so far as to advertise the book publicly as being in the press,

But did nothing more.

The manuscript remained in Crosby's hands,

Unpublished,

Until Austin repurchased the copyright from him in 1816.

In December 1800,

George Austin unexpectedly announced his decision to retire from the ministry,

Leave Steventon,

And move the family to 4 Sydney Place in Bath,

Somerset.

While retirement and travel were good for the elder Austins,

Jane Austin was shocked to be told she was moving 50 miles away from the only home she had ever known.

An indication of her state of mind is her lack of productivity as a writer during the time she lived in Bath.

She was able to make some revisions to Susan,

And she began and then abandoned a new novel,

The Watsons,

But there was nothing like the productivity of the years 1795 to 1799.

Tomlin suggests this reflects a deep depression disabling her as a writer,

But Honan disagrees,

Arguing Austin wrote or revised her manuscripts throughout her creative life,

Except for a few months after her father died.

It is often claimed that Austin was unhappy in Bath,

Which caused her to lose interest in writing,

But it is just as possible that Austin's social life in Bath prevented her from spending much time writing novels.

The critic Robert Irvine argued that if Austin spent more time writing novels when she was in the countryside,

It might just have been because she had more spare time,

As opposed to being more happy in the countryside,

As is often argued.

Furthermore,

Austin frequently both moved and traveled over southern England during this period,

Which was hardly a conducive environment for writing a long novel.

Austin sold the rights to publish Susan to the publisher Crosby and Company,

Who paid her £10,

Equivalent to £1,

020 in 2023.

Crosby and Company advertised Susan,

But never published it.

The years from 1801 to 1804 are something of a blank space for Austin scholars,

As Cassandra destroyed all her letters from her sister in this period for unknown reasons.

In December 1802,

Austin received her only known proposal of marriage.

She and her sister visited Aletheia and Catherine Bigg,

Old friends who lived near Bassingstoke.

Her younger brother,

Harris Bigg Wither,

Had recently finished his education at Oxford and was also at home.

Bigg Wither proposed and Austin accepted.

As described by Carolyn Austin,

Jane's niece and Reginald Bigg Wither,

A descendant,

Harris was not attractive.

He was a large,

Plain-looking man who spoke little,

Stuttered when he did speak,

Was aggressive in conversation,

And almost completely tactless.

However,

Austin had known him since both were young,

And the marriage offered many practical advantages to Austin and her family.

She was the heir to extensive family estates,

Located in the area where the sisters had grown up.

With these resources,

Austin could provide her parents a comfortable old age,

Give Cassandra a permanent home,

And perhaps assist her brothers in their careers.

By the next morning,

Austin realized she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance.

No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austin felt about this proposal.

Irvine described Bigg Wither as somebody who seems to have been a man very hard to like,

Let alone love.

In 1814,

Austin wrote a letter to her niece,

Fanny Knight,

Who had asked for advice about a serious relationship,

Telling her that having written so much on one side of the equation,

I shall now turn around and entreat you not to commit yourself farther,

And not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him.

Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.

The scholar Douglas Bush wrote that Austin had had a very high ideal of a love that should unite a husband and wife,

All of her heroines,

Known in proportion to their maturity,

The meaning of ardent love.

A possible autobiographical element in Sense and Sensibility occurs when Eleanor Dashwood contemplates the worst and most irremediable of all evils,

A connection for life with an unsuitable man.

In 1804,

While living in Bath,

Austin started but did not complete her novel The Watsons.

The story centers on an invalid and impoverished clergyman and his four unmarried daughters.

Sutherland describes the novel as a study in the harsh economic realities of dependent women's lives.

Conan suggests,

And Tomlin agrees,

That Austin chose to stop work on the novel after her father died on January 21st,

1805,

And her personal circumstances resembled those of her characters too closely to her comfort.

Her father's relatively sudden death left Jane,

Cassandra,

And their mother in a precarious financial situation.

Edward,

James,

Henry,

And Francis Austin,

Known as Frank,

Pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters.

For the next four years,

The family's living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity.

They spent part of the time in rented quarters in Bath,

Before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon and Gomersham.

They moved for the autumn months to the newly fashionable seasoned resort of Worthing,

On the Sussex coast,

Where they resided at Stanford Cottage.

It was here that Austin is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan,

And added its conclusion.

In 1806,

The family moved to Southampton,

Where they shared a house with Frank Austin and his new wife.

A large part of this time they spent visiting various branches of the family.

On April 5,

1809,

About three months before the family's move to Chawdon,

Austin wrote an angry letter to Richard Crosby,

Offering him a new manuscript of Susan,

If needed,

To secure the immediate publication of the novel,

And requesting the return of the original so she could find another publisher.

Crosby replied that he had not agreed to publish the book by any particular time,

Or at all,

And that Austin could repurchase the manuscript for the ten pounds he had paid her,

And find another publisher.

She did not have the resources to buy the copyright back at the time,

But was able to purchase it in 1816.

Reviews

She had an interesting (albeit short) life. Thank you, Benjamin! 😻

Interesting talk about an iconic author from the past. Nice one.

Very interesting story that gave me a very good sleep 😴 💤