Behind the Quill: Timelines

When writing Jane Austen fanfiction, most writers choose a specific time period for their story, both for consistency and to help ground the reader. Even though Austen herself rarely gave explicit dates in her novels, most readers and writers enjoy having a timeframe—especially when writing crossovers or merged universes.

In my case, creating an Alternate Austenverse meant I had to be especially careful with my timelines since I wanted to keep it true to her original works. Without solid dates, it would be far too easy to accidentally overlap or misalign events between books. I had to figure out not just when each story takes place, but also how old each character would be at different points in time, and whether their paths could reasonably cross.

Writers usually follow one of a few methods when choosing Austen-era timelines—mainly:

1. Using the dates Austen started writing each novel.

2. Aligning the story to those years just before or after she began writing (adjusted to match any internal references).

3. Using the publication dates as story dates.

   
   

For example, some choose 1811 for Sense and Sensibility because that’s when it was published, while others place it around 1795 because that’s when Austen first drafted Elinor and Marianne.

I considered those options, but ultimately chose a different approach—not to be contrary, but because my focus isn’t on the "romantic" aspects of Austen’s novels. I’m more interested in their realism, the psychology of her characters, and the true focus of her stories—how young women of the period transitioned from youthful naivety and embraced a more thoughtful, mature mindset.

At their core, all of Austen’s novels are coming-of-age stories. They center on young women—most between the ages of 19 and 21—who learn more about themselves and the world by entering new social spaces or encountering new people who've entered their own small circle. I wanted my Austenverse timeline to reflect that developmental arc.

So, I built my timeline around birth years. For consistency, I set:

• Most heroines as born in the 1780s, matching Anne Elliot’s canon birth year of 1787.

• Younger characters like Lydia Bennet born in the early 1790s like Mary Musgrove (née Elliot) .

• Older characters like Charlotte Lucas or Elizabeth Watson in the 1770s.

I also incorporated date clues from the novels—such as November 18 falling on a Monday in Pride and Prejudice—to help refine the exact years.

Here’s the timeline I settled on:

• The Watsons – October 1801 to July 1802

• Mansfield Park – ~Summer 1802 to ~Summer 1803 (Sir Thomas goes to Antigua in 1801)

• Northanger Abbey – January to March 1802

• Sense and Sensibility – February 1802 to ~Summer 1803

• Lady Susan – December 1803 to February/March 1804

• Pride and Prejudice – September 1805 to August 1806

• Emma – ~August1807 to ~August 1808

• Persuasion – June/July 1814 to ~February 1815, with relevant events going back to 1800–1801

• Sanditon – July/August 1815

This timeline lets me keep the heroines around the same age and track where different characters might have been at any point. It also helps establish background events—like who would have attended what social season, which families might be in town, and what stage of life each character is in.

I started with a base timeline I called the Original Austenverse—just Austen’s characters, living in a shared, consistent timeline with no outside interference. Then, once that structure was solid, I began create the background (before, during, and after) that connected the stories without changing them.

So I'll discuss that in the next post.

Next in this series: The Background