The courtship of Jane Austen

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Jane Austen wrote some of English literature’s most enduring romances, but she never enjoyed a passionate love affair of her own.

Or did she?

A new film and biography suggest the young writer of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” was not the solitary genius long imagined by historians but a free spirit whose imagination was fed by a passionate, ill-fated courtship.

The theory, presented by historian Jon Spence in his book “Becoming Jane Austen,” has been loosely adapted into a film starring Anne Hathaway and Maggie Smith, one of seven Austen-inspired movies and television miniseries due for release this year.

Audiences remain entranced by Austen’s tales of love and loss, desire and disappointment despite their seemingly outdated focus on the intricate courtship rituals of early 19th-century Britain.

But was Austen’s ability to tap into these universal themes a product of her rich imagination — or was she inspired by her own unfulfilled longing?

Mr. Spence, like many historians before him, has attempted to answer the question by examining letters Austen wrote during the winter of 1795-96 to her sister, Cassandra, who was staying with her fiance’s family in Berkshire.

The young writer confided of her attraction to Tom Lefroy, the nephew of a neighbor visiting Austen’s hometown of Steventon, Hampshire.

Both were 20 years old and penniless, but the attraction was instantaneous.

“Imagine to yourself every thing most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together,” Austen wrote of her behavior with Lefroy at a series of parties and family gatherings.

In another letter, Austen wrote with giddy anticipation about an impending ball to be thrown by Lefroy’s aunt.

“I look forward with great impatience” to the party, she wrote, “as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening.”

A marriage proposal? The prospect is never confirmed in the letters, but Mr. Spence believes Austen was anticipating it.

The couple separated soon afterward — Lefroy to Hampshire to begin his law studies in London, where he lived with his great uncle and benefactor, Benjamin Langlois, and Austen to Kent with her two brothers.

Conventional thinking has been that this was the end of their relationship, a brief and innocent fling, and they never saw each other again.

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