Austen’s Darkness

Jane Austen died in 1817 at the age of 41. The nature of her fatal illness is unclear, but her recorded symptoms suggest Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As early as 1813, around the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Austen had suffered from back pain, pruritis, neuralgia, night fevers, and anemia causing weakness and discoloration of the face. She endured to compose another masterpiece or four. During these years she was dying in plain sight, but, it seems, almost invisibly. Her niece Caroline would write, “Aunt Jane’s health began to fail before we knew she was really ill.”