The Golden Era
by Claudia Serea

Wealth was measured in cream for coffee
and chicken for soup.

The days of the rich
were made of imported chocolate
and hair spray.

The days of the poor
were of cold tea
and thin air.

It was the time when God
was taking orders in a restaurant

and delivered steak and fondue
to only one part of the town.

On the town streets,
the saints were walking without shoes.

It was a time when no one talked,
but everyone clapped
and sang.

We found out we were happy
from the news.

It was a time
when no one told us
what would happen,

but everyone knew.

“The Golden Era” by Claudia Serea from Nothing Important Happened Today. Broadstone Books © 2016. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of novelist who wrote "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" That’s Jane Austen, (books by this author) born in Steventon, England (1775). She grew up in a large family — six brothers and one sister. Her sister Cassandra, three years older than Jane, was her best friend, and neither of them ever married. Not much is known about Jane's life beyond small details recorded in the letters that have survived — Cassandra burned most of Jane's correspondence.

There are only two drawings of Jane Austen that still exist, and only one show’s her face. But there are plenty of written descriptions about her. Her niece wrote: "As to my aunt's personal appearance, hers was the first face I can remember thinking pretty. Her face was rather round than long — she had a bright, but not a pink color — a clear brown complexion, and very good hazel eyes. Her hair, a darkish brown, curled naturally, it was in short curls around her face. She always wore a cap."

Jane Austen wrote her first full-length novel, Elinor and Marianne, sometime in the 1790s, a novel told in letters that many years later was published as Sense and Sensibility. She wrote a second novel, First Impressions, which she completed at the age of 21, with the famous and cynical first line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Austen's father tried to publish First Impressions just a few months after she finished it, and it was rejected — although years later it, too, was retitled, as Pride and Prejudice. Her next novel was Susan, eventually titled Northanger Abbey. This one she did manage to get accepted, and the publisher paid her £10 and printed an ad saying that it would be published soon. But he didn't actually publish it.

That was in 1803. For the next few years, Austen was relatively unproductive. Her father left the ministry and moved the whole family to Bath, and it was a hard adjustment for Jane, leaving the house she had lived in her whole life. Her father died a few years later, and Jane, Cassandra, and their mother had no income — property was passed to sons or the nearest male relative, and there was no viable work for women in their social class. Finding a husband was really the only chance of financial stability, but Jane's one marriage proposal had occurred years before, from Harris Bigg Wither. Jane had known him since they were children — he was the brother of friends — but they had not seen each other for many years. In 1802, the Austens went to stay with the Bigg family, and within one week Harris proposed to Jane. Wither was large, unattractive, awkward, and he stuttered. The two did not have much in common, nor did they know each other very well or seem to have any sort of attraction to each other. But he needed a wife, and she needed financial stability — also, he lived just a few miles from the home where she had grown up, and which she missed so much while she was in Bath. So she accepted. That night she went to bed, had a sleepless night, got up in the morning, and announced that she could not marry him after all. She wrote to one of her nieces later in her life: "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

The family's move to Bath, the rejected marriage proposal from Harris Bigg Wither, her father's death, and her subsequent poverty all happened between 1803 — when Northanger Abbey was accepted but not actually published — and 1811, when she finally published her first novel, Sense and Sensibility. It was a success, got good reviews, and sold well. In 1813, Pride and Prejudice was published, and it did even better. She followed that up with Mansfield Park (1814) a year later, and Emma (1815) the year after that, both of them successes. But then, in 1816, her brother Henry's bank failed and the whole family lost money; the brothers could no longer support Jane, Cassandra, and their mother. Jane had finished the novel that would eventually be published as Persuasion, and she had bought back the copyright from the manuscript that would be Northanger Abbey, but she was distracted by finances and by a mysterious illness that began to slow her down that year. Scholars have argued about what Austen was sick with — the three main contenders have been Addison's disease, Hodgkin's lymphoma, and disseminated bovine tuberculosis — but no one knows for sure. Whatever it was, it ended up causing her death in 1817. She was just 41 years old. Persuasian and Northanger Abbey were published later that year.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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