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
Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels Jane Austen's universe is a privileged world which conceals the harshness of the living conditions of the vast majority of the rural population, a population which is impoverished, uneducated and brutal. Thus common amusements include the omnipresent dog fighting and cockfighting. In the spirit of the times, this brutality is considered by many politicians as being necessary to get the British people accustomed to the sight of blood, and to forge "the true British bulldog character". Jane Austen's novels are set in the social context of the gentry, to which Jane Austen herself belonged. Some of her heroines have no