Henry Thomas Austen In 1793 he joined the Oxfordshire Militia, rising to captain before resigning in 1801. In 1804 he founded, with two associates, the bank of Austen, Maude and Tilson in Covent Garden, London. It went bankrupt in 1816. He entered the church that same year and was made curate of Chawton, Hampshire. In 1820 he was made Rector of Steventon. He arranged the publication of "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion" after Jane Austen's death in 1817. He is believed to have published the first biographical notice of her, which prefaces those novels. He revised and expanded that short memoir for the republication
A Memoir of Jane Austen detail, such as descriptions of clothing, a "eulogy of spinning", and a digression on the Welsh ancestry of some Austen relations. Nor does the biography aim to tell the unvarnished truth. For example, the family hid the existence of a second brother, the handicapped George Austen, and described Edward Austen as the second brother instead of the third. They also omitted the arrest and jailing of Mrs. Leigh Perrot, Jane Austen's aunt, for shoplifting in Bath. According to 19th-century biography standards, "neither piece of discretion is surprising". Jane Austen herself is described as "a comfortable figure, shunning fame and professional