Jane Actually

true disappointment. Lefroy never proposed; it would have been an unsuitable match for him and had they married, who can say whether Jane would have pursued her career.
    That career began early, encouraged by her father, his library and her perusal of it. She began early versions of
Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice
and
Northanger Abbey
while the family lived in Steventon, but in 1801 her father decided to retire and the Reverend Austen and his wife and two daughters moved to Bath in Somerset. The hot mineral baths of the resort town attracted the fashionable and the infirm and the city was also a marketplace where parents could hope to find their children suitable marriage partners.
    For Jane, however, the move was a wrench from the home and the country she loved and to a city that she grew to dislike. With his death, Mrs Austen and her two daughters were in dire financial difficulties. Jane’s sister had income from the bequest of a fiancé who died before they could marry, and Mrs Austen had income from her family, but Jane had little to call her own. Fortunately her brothers contributed to the upkeep of the Austen women, but they remained largely homeless after George Austen’s death, constantly visiting friends and relatives, including the homes of Edward Austen Knight. It was this same Edward, the third child of George and Cassandra, who offered Chawton Cottage as a home to the Austen women in 1809.
    If you’re wondering about Edward’s last name, it came about after he was adopted by wealthy relatives who saw in him the child they never had. Austen’s novels also had several examples of children raised
in absentia
by wealthy relatives (or relatively wealthier friends in the case of Jane Fairfax in
Emma
). Whatever grief or disruption or relief this caused Jane’s parents, Edward’s adoption provided an important safety net. Even before the death of Jane’s father, they often visited Godmersham Park, the home of the Knight family, and later Chawton House, Edward’s estate very near the cottage.
    The offer of Chawton Cottage meant a return to Hampshire for the Austen women and for Jane it meant a return to writing. She revised
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride and Prejudice
and gave them their final titles. With the financial help of her brother Henry,
S&S
was published in 1811.
P&P
followed in 1813.
    In her lifetime, all her novels were published anonymously, first attributed to “By a Lady” and later as the author of the previous books. It wasn’t until
Persuasion
and
Northanger Abbey
that her identity was acknowledged.
    The choice of keeping her identity secret was largely her own. She did see some financial success and critical acclaim in her lifetime, but her works lapsed out of print after her death, until they were revived in 1832. Since then, they have never been out of print and her fame has risen steadily. The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom, started in 1947, and the Jane Austen Society of North America in 1987, have contributed to her fame. Her novels have been made into movies, television serials and even computer games. Many authors have written continuations of her stories and have recast her characters as vampires, zombie slayers and detectives.
    * Jane lived during the reign of King George III and his son, George IV. The Regency period, during which Jane’s novels were published, began in 1811, when George III was incapacitated (just watch the movie
The Madness of King George
) and his son became Regent, and ended in 1820 with the death of George III, whence his son was crowned king.

The afterlife explained
    In 1997, a researcher inadvertently confirmed the existence of the afterlife. Her research and her invention confirmed both the existence of souls and the terrible knowledge that each soul remains alone after death, unable to communicate with the other dead and with the living.
    Then in 2001, the technology she invented gave rise to the AfterNet, a worldwide network that allowed the dead—or disembodied as most preferred to be called—to interact with the living via the Internet. The device or terminal she had invented projects an electromagnetic field that the disembodied can recognize and manipulate.
    Unfortunately there is no easy way for a disembodied person to prove who they were in life. The energy of a disembodied person is unique, however, and could be used for later identification, but gave no clue if that person was male or female, of what race or