Jane Austen French aristocrat whose first husband the Comte de Feuillide had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry Austen. The description of the execution of the Comte de Feuillide related by his widow left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life. During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of "Elinor and Marianne", Austen began writing a third novel with the working title "Susan" – later "Northanger Abbey" – a satire on the popular Gothic novel. Austen completed her work about a year later. In early
The History of England (Austen) The History of England (Austen) The History of England is a 1791 work by Jane Austen, written when the author was fifteen. The work is a burlesque which pokes fun at widely used schoolroom history books such as Oliver Goldsmith's 1771 "The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II". Austen mockingly imitates the style of textbook histories of English monarchs, while ridiculing historians' pretensions to objectivity. It was illustrated with coloured portraits by Austen's elder sister Cassandra, to whom the work is dedicated. The second page of the "History" reads: Her "History" cites as