EARLY YEARS IN HAMPSHIRE .sx Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in her father's parsonage at Steventon , a small village five miles from Basingstoke , and it remained her home for the next twenty-five years until her father decided suddenly to retire to Bath .sx It was at Steventon and on holidays in different parts of Hampshire and Kent that she drafted her first three novels , Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey , all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three .sx George Austen's parsonage or rectory was pulled down not many years after her death because it had become too decrepit in the eyes of his successor , his own son James , and today its site is the corner of a field marked only by the iron pump which stood in the Austen's courtyard , now guarded against the cows by ugly railings .sx Behind it , higher up the slope , are traces in the turf of terracing where they contrived a short walk across the top of their modest garden .sx Beyond the hedge were the few fields that George Austen farmed .sx The situation was agreeable but by no means idyllic .sx This part of Hampshire is decently but dully undulating , the fields too large for their hedges to form interesting patterns , the hills unspectacular , while Steventon itself was more a line of cottages than a village , the church and manor house standing half a mile from where its centre ought to be .sx The parsonage was quite large and had a certain style .sx We have two drawings of it , front and back , done by Anna Austen , James's daughter , in about 1814 , and they indicate something of its huggermugger amplitude and modest pretensions to gentility .sx There is a short approach drive to a latticed front door , and the windows , one or two to a room , show how their large family was packed in .sx There were two parlours and a kitchen , a private study for the Vicar and ten bedrooms above , three of them in the attics .sx Jane and Cassandra shared a bedroom , as they continued to do in other houses all their lives , but they had a 'dressing-room' where Jane kept her pianoforte and , one supposes , wrote .sx Given the lack of privacy , of lavatories , running water , adequate lighting and any method of preserving perishable food except by salting or smoking , and a household which at times amounted to fifteen people counting servants and the students whom the vicar enrolled to supplement his stipend , only remarkable good temper and forebearance can have made life tolerable .sx None of Jane's fictional families except the Prices of Portsmouth lived so much on top of one another .sx But it was more than tolerable :sx it was exuberant and intensely affectionate .sx All the Austens except one mentally backward son were alert people , as playful as they were industrious , ambitious in the least obnoxious way , humorous , companionable and above all good-natured .sx Their father , Rev. George Austen , was handsome in feature , energetic , intelligent and profoundly attached to his children .sx His tolerance is shown in his attitude to Jane's early writing .sx Far from putting it aside as a childhood fantasy , he encouraged her , laughed with her over her mounting roll-call of real or imaginary characters , and when she produced a full-length novel , First Impressions , ( later to become Pride and Prejudice ) , which contained literature's most brilliant lampoon of a foolish clergyman , he offered it to Cadell's for publication " at the author's expense " and shared her disappointment when it was refused .sx Jane's mother , born Cassandra Leigh , was shrewd , high-minded , determined and capable , with a strong sense of humour and an attachment to her children which equalled her husband's and their love for each other .sx It was a family exceptional for its mutual support and lifelong cohesiveness .sx Their occupations at Steventon were those of any middle-class family :sx household chores , drawing , reading aloud , music-making , sewing , card - playing , amateur theatricals , church-going , walking , shooting and riding for the boys , and for all of them visiting and being visited .sx Their treats were not concerts , theatres or seaside holidays ( at least , not yet ) but dances .sx It was dancing , and friendships nurtured on the dance - floor , that took Jane Austen away from the ramshackle rectory into a wider society , and who can doubt that her novels originated in the family's jovial postmortems on the parties they attended and the odd people they met , for they shared an ironic view of the world , delighted in the ridiculous , and balanced propriety with irreverence in a wholly healthy proportion .sx At the same time , they were left in no doubt that the life they enjoyed was privileged .sx Jane well understood the hardships of the rural poor , which in her lifetime , as William Cobbett constantly reminded the gentry , were extreme .sx She was excellently placed to observe English society upward and downward , humble enough to meet the villagers on terms not intimidating to them , refined and bright enough to associate with the minor and not so minor aristocracy without awe or awkwardness .sx Like Elizabeth Bennet , " there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody " .sx Her appearance , as well as her natural high spirits and curiosity about people , gave her confidence .sx She was exceptionally attractive .sx It is unfortunate that the only two portraits we have of her are sketches by her sister which do her less than justice .sx The more unfamiliar of the two shows her from behind , her features and body so concealed by her voluminous clothes and bonnet that it might be a sketch of any woman of any age from sixteen to sixty , when in fact she was about twenty-seven when it was made .sx The second , drawn some nine years later , is even more misleading , for where is the intelligence , the humour , the imagination , the kindness in those dim eyes and pinched lips beneath the mob cap ?sx It contradicts every account we have of her , like Mrs Beckford's , " I remember her as a tall thin spare person , with very high cheekbones , great colour , sparkling eyes not large but joyous and intelligent " , or the Rev. Fowle's in conversation with a friend , the more convincing because it is hesitant :sx " Pretty - certainly pretty - bright and a good deal of colour in her face - like a doll - no , that would not give at all the idea , for she had so much expression - she was like a child - quite a child , very lively and full of humour - most amiable , most beloved " ; and finally her niece Caroline's first-hand testimony , " She was not an absolute beauty , but before she left Steventon she was established as a very pretty girl .sx " She enjoyed her own delectability , dressed with design , and she could attract and flirt .sx The importance she attaches in her novels to the handsomeness of her heroes and the beauty of her heroines ( not only from the neck up ) is an indication of the pleasure she took in good appearance .sx She was not without vanity .sx " A pleasing young woman " was how a friend described her to Cassandra , who repeated the compliment .sx " Well" , commented Jane , who was then thirty-five , " that must do :sx one cannot pretend to anything better now , thankful to having it continued a few years longer .sx " .sx Much as she enjoyed party-going , it was no part of her doctrine that the grander the party the better .sx She knew that the dullest occasions were often found in the smartest houses , as at Lady Middleton's in Sense and Sensibility , where the insipidity of the conversation " produced not one novelty of thought or expression " .sx What she most enjoyed was a small , lively dinner-party followed by an impromptu dance , and a visit to or from the most attractive guest next morning .sx She based the most significant scenes in her novels on such occasions , advancing the plot mostly by conversation .sx Her ear was astonishingly receptive and retentive , for how otherwise , aged twenty or little more , could she have invented conversations so subtle in thought and so beautifully balanced in language unless she had experienced and contributed to them ?sx Indeed was she not improving on them , since few of her friends could have been capable of so spontaneous , melodious and epigrammatic a style as Emma or Henry Crawford , who expressed themselves so well that in real life we would need thirty seconds pause between each sentence while we shaped the next ?sx The neighbourhood of Basingstoke was well suited to the upbringing of a novelist intent on reproducing , half-satirically , the society of the upper-middle class and clergy .sx The mix of rank , their varied dwellings , the scattering of villages round a small market town afforded all she needed for plotting her simple stories and expressing her moral attitudes .sx One is aware of a wickeder world outside , in large towns and seaports , and she does not wholly suppress the distant boom of naval gunfire , specially in Persuasion , but her books are mainly concerned with the normal and apparently immutable style of English country living where nothing much happens except the slow shift in the relationship of one young person to another .sx There was only a difference of eight years between the five youngest Austen children .sx They grew up together , shared the same friendships , visited the same houses - Steventon Manor , Ashe Park , Ashe House , Deane , Manydown , Oakley Hall , and then the grander quintet - Hackwood , Hurstbourne Park , The Vyne , Kempshott Park and Laverstoke .sx There were several others .sx When Mrs Bennet boasts , " We dine out with four and twenty families " , the same could have been said of the Austens .sx It was probably a wider selection of houses than most vicarage children would enjoy today when communication between them is easier and class distinctions less rigid .sx Just because the badness of the roads confined people to their immediate neighbourhood in winter , and to the range of a pony-cart in summer , and because they lacked any other form of social entertainment ( no tennis , no swimming pools ) , they tended to make the most of their close group , even the higher aristocracy among them , though the peers did not expect to be invited back to the parsonages .sx We hear , for example , of the Lords Portsmouth , Dorchester and Bolton attending a ball at the Angel Inn at Basingstoke where sixty people were packed into the 'Assembly Rooms' , a large hall above the stables and coach-house , later to become a hayloft with the old chandelier still swinging above the hay , but demolished when Basingstoke became so pleased with its present that it forgot its past .sx Dances were held there once a month during the Season , and there can be little doubt that in describing the dance at Meryton when Darcy snubbed Elizabeth , Jane Austen was drawing directly upon them .sx The scene in the novel resembles too exactly the scene as she described it for Cassandra at Christmas 1798 :sx " Mr Calland , who appeared as usual with his hat in his hand , stood every now and then behind Catherine and me to be talked to and abused for not dancing .sx We teased him , however , into it at last .sx " About another ball she wrote , " There were more dancers than the room could hold .sx I do not think I was very much in request .sx People were apt rather not to ask me if they could help it .sx " One catches the mocking and self-mocking style which may account for her shortage of partners .sx But there was another motive in her eagerness .sx All dances are courtships of a kind .sx " To be fond of dancing " , pontificates Sir William Lucas in Pride and Prejudice , " was a certain step towards falling in love .sx " .sx We know of one serious flirtation , and one proposal , during the Steventon days , each linked with a house that came to mean much to her .sx The flirtation was with Tom Lefroy , a handsome young Irishman , nephew of the Rev. George Lefroy , Rector of Ashe , a village within walking distance of Steventon .sx Jane spoke and wrote of him in a jocular , off-hand manner which revealed her more serious attraction .sx I am almost afraid to tell you , [she told her sister in the very first of her letters to survive , dated January 1796,] how my Irish friend and I behaved .sx