Jane's mother, Elizabeth Hammatt Goodwin, was fairly well-known for her poetry and for a translation of German stories. Many of the events Jane Goodwin wrote about were first heard as stories told to her as a child by her mother. Jane Goodwin wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1850 proclaiming her Pilgrim heritage and dedicating her work to the memory of her mother. This picture is a view of the Plymouth Rock that would have been very familiar to Jane. At least one of Jane's brothers achieved considerable fame in his lifetime, the Honorable John A. Goodwin. John was a member of the House of Representatives, and Speaker of the House for two years. He also published historical documents on the Pilgrims. According to the March 31, 1894 Boston Globe "a work from his pen called "The Pilgrim Republic" is today considered one of the ablest and most authentic histories of the early settlers that has ever been written" (7).

After Jane's father died, her mother moved the family to Boston. Jane was educated in Boston private schools where she developed an early taste for literature. She was known to be "studious, with a flair for research which manifested itself at an early age" (Kunitz 42). Austin began seriously writing when she was barely a teenager, "all her productions finding ready sale with the local press" (Boston Globe 7). At age nineteen Jane married Loring Henry Austin, a Harvard graduate of Boston. Jane gave up publishing during the birth and early childhood of her three children, Lilian Ivers (1851), Le Baron Loring (1853), and Rose Standish (1860). A fourth child, Isabella, was born in 1854, but died in infancy. Austin resumed writing stories and novels eleven years later.

About the time Austin began writing again, the family (children age 12, 10 and 3) moved temporarily to Concord. Austin became a visible member of the Concord community. Jane was a frequent visitor of Orchard House, shown here, where Louisa May Alcott lived. She and Louisa often wrote together. Both authors deviated from their standard popular fiction to write lurid tales of gothic romance, mystery and horror. Austin even dedicated a book from that time, called Cipher, to Louisa. As Hutchinson reports, Austin's name "has cast upon the house [on Main Street] a certain degree of fame. Tourists often ask to have the Austin house pointed out." One of the most famous residents of Concord was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Austin was known to visit Emerson's house, shown here, for lectures and to borrow and lend books. Austin herself lived in the center of fashionable Concord, on Main Street. Evidence of the Austins' residence in this house is physically present in the recognizable signature etching on a window in an upstairs bedroom "J G Austin June 24, 1863". While there is no direct evidence, it seems likely that this date was when Jane began full time residency in the Concord house. Nathaniel Hawthorne, another famous literary resident of Concord at the same time that Jane lived there, was greet friends with the Austins. His house, taken from a photograph circa 1890, is shown here. In 1872 a writer in the Springfield Republican wrote "The cheerful home of Mrs. Jane G. Austin, the novelist and feuilletoniste, is distinguished by less of the peculiarities which form such a delightful study in Concord, but has an atmosphere of its own which is irresistibly charming," and characterized Jane, "whose facile pen now amuses so many readers," as "a rare talker, and not the least bit of a bluestocking" (reproduced in Cameron Emerson, Thoreau ... p 71). This is the Public Library as it would have looked when Jane Goodwin Austin lived in Concord. F. B. Sanborn printed an article in The Critic, (April 1906) on women in Concord in which he mentions Jane Goodwin Austin as an "excellent writer" and "successful novelist" (Swayne). The Concord Public Library records show that Jane Goodwin Austin donated books there from 1863-1873 (The Concord Journal). Many rare editions of Jane Goodwin Austin can only be found today in special collections at the Concord Public Library.

Austin professed to be a devout member of the Protestant Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist, which was located on Bowdoin Street, Boston. Even after Austin moved permanently to Roxsbury, she still spent time each winter in Boston in order to be near her church. While on the one hand Austin was exceedingly religious and Christian, she was also frequently unconventional. She modeled her two favorite priests into characters in her book Mrs. Beauchamp Brown, except she added marriage and "lovemaking" to their characters. While frequently described as cheerful and friendly, Austin also experienced moments of deep depression: "I have such awful fits of the blues I almost die of them" (letter to Adams 30 July 1883). Austin went to Prince Edward Island, auspiciously to do church missionary work, but really to have some time to herself ("I wanted to be severely alone, and I am"). While there she wrote to Oscar Fay Adams that she was "bored of all of earth...Having at last attained heaven we find we didn't know what we ached for when we asked for heaven - Ah no, God forgive me I don't mean any such thing - but don't you know just how I feel? (letter to Adams 30 July 1883).

In the early seventies Austin gave up full time residency in Concord, moved back to Boston, and rented the Main Street House to Jonathan Barrett (Hutchinson's paper on the History of the House). This is Tremont street, near many Boston sites Austin frequented, taken around 1885. By 1883, and as late as 1888, Jane Goodwin Austin occupied a house at 70 Temple Street in Boston. Austin spent her later years at Linwood Square in Roxbury (Rocksbury), eventually moving in with her married daughter Lilian De Silva at 2 Linwood Square. Austin later moved into the Waterston Hotel at 8 Bulfinch Place, Boston. Henry Austin died two years before his wife in 1892 at age 73. Jane wrote to a relative in August of 1892: "but alas the world has changed to me since then - that dear companion of my whole life has gone and with him much of the strength and interest of what is left. I know you will excuse this brief note when I tell you that I am just up from a severe illness - cholera morbus, and I am still so weak that I can do very little" (letter to Patch 14 August 1892). Somewhere in the second half of her career Austin developed a superstition that she must begin a new book every first of October. The year she died "although barely able to sit up in bed" (Boston Globe March 31, 1894), Austin began a new book. This book was to be the fifth and last Pilgrim book, Next Door to Betty, dealing primarily with Captain Benjamin Church and the period of the French and Indian Wars (The National Cyclopedia; letter to Wingate). Her last printed work was a contribution to the Boston Globe's "Santa Claus" symposium on December 23, 1893 (Boston Globe March 31, 1894).

Austin died on Friday morning, March 30, 1894. She left three children, Mrs Rose Standish Austin of Roxbury, Mr. Le Baron Loring Austin of Chicago, and Lilian Ivers De Silva of Roxbury. Rose had been educated abroad "at a good deal of expense" and in return supported herself for much of her life, for example in 1883 she was in Illinois teaching (letter to Adams Feast of All Saints 1883). Jane Goodwin Austin sorely missed Rose when she was not at "home," that is, in the Boston area. Le Baron had moved to Chicago much earlier with his wife, "a poor little New York City girl," and they had at least two children (letter to Adams Feast of All Saints 1883). Lilian remained close by with her husband in Roxbury.