​   “What is exceptional about Austen as a novelist is that she tells us exactly how much money each of her characters has.”
   So says an October 2020 ​New Yorker article, and who would dispute it? Mr. Darcy's entrance into the ballroom was followed by a "report which was in general circulation within five minutes... of his having ten thousand a year." Everyone seems to know how much money everybody else has: Mr. Collins knows Elizabeth is only entitled to one thousand pounds in the four percents after her mother’s death. 
     A poem by W.H. Auden, quoted above, surmises that Austen might be shocked to meet Lord Byron in heaven, but she is herself shocking because she's so frank and unsentimental about "the economic basis of society." However, as I’ve come to realize, the statement: “Jane Austen’s novels are preoccupied with money” is incomplete and somewhat misleading. The statement should be, “Jane Austen’s novels, like most novels of her time, were preoccupied with money.”  There was nothing exceptional about it.
    Many, many, novels of this period include exact descriptions of incomes, expectations, disappointments, and inheritances, especially as they relate to someone’s ability to get married. You can literally pick any18th-century novel at random and find passages referring to these things. And, just as in Sense & Sensibility, the financial circumstances of the main characters are often laid out in the introductory passages.  Here is a sampling:  

   Three days before her death, Jane Austen wrote a witty poem about St. Swithin, the patron saint of Winchester from which I take the quote: "But behold me immortal." ​Austen died on July 18, 1817 and was laid to rest on July 24.

  As we know, the fact of Austen's being a novelist is not mentioned on the stone slab that covers her grave and this has been the subject of much commentary, speculation, and even criticism. 
   The critic Margaret Kirkham says Austen's plaque is "certainly remarkable in its insistence upon Christian virtue and total silence about the literary distinction which had, presumably, earned her the honor of a cathedral burial."
 It seems to me that that your gravestone would be the most unremarkable place for your relatives to insist on your Christian virtues. Kirkham's implication, I suppose, is that the Austens are protesting too much. And we don't know if Austen's burial in the cathedral had any connection to her authorship. (See my previous post for some surmises on why Austen was buried in the cathedral.)
    However, other female authors, as we will see, were also praised for their Christian virtues on their gravestones. As for the contention that it was "remarkable" for all mention of Austen's writing to be omitted, we'll look into that as well.  
   Lately, I've been diving into the novels of the long 18th century and comparing them to Austen's. (For example, here and here). It occurred to me to ask: did other authors announce their authorship on their tombstones? I started checking, but quickly realized I was asking an apples-to-oranges question.  The other authors were known as authors in their lifetimes. Some were very famous. Sometimes the inscription in question is not on their tombstone, but on a memorial plaque. Sometimes the inscription is contemporaneous with their burial, and sometimes it's erected after their death by admirers. That said, if you'd like a nice graveyard tour, come along with me:

   Jane Austen died on this day, 204 years ago, in rented rooms in Winchester, attended by her loving sister Cassandra and under the care of a well-respected local physician.
    Her death was lamented by her friends and family at the time, and we still mourn today for the premature loss of an extraordinary individual and a transcendentally gifted artist.
    We Janeites tend to be very proprietorial about "our Jane," responding with indignation to her critics, and in the case of her death, wishing that there was something more that could have been done. But Dr. Helena Kelly takes this proprietorial attitude to new heights. As I have previously noted, she tends to discount and dismiss any other interpretation of Austen's life and work but her own. And by "dismiss," I mean that she calls Austen's own relatives liars and fibbers who didn't understand Austen nearly so well as she does...     

  Jane Austen spent the final two months of her life in Winchester, 16 miles away from her home in Chawton. The official family version is that Austen "was persuaded" to go to Winchester for medical help. When she left Chawton for the last time on May 24th, no doubt everyone was hoping for a medical miracle. Within a fortnight, however, Austen's medical practitioner in Winchester concluded that her case was hopeless. She lingered on until mid-July, dying on July 18th.
  If nothing could be done for Austen in Winchester, could there be another reason why Austen chose to remain there, to spend her last days in a strange town? Instead of dying in her own bed at home? Even the extra expense of taking lodgings was no idle consideration for this family. Perhaps her rich brother Edward stepped up to help or perhaps Jane paid for the lodging, food, doctor and nurse out of her own earnings, but this was a family of very modest means that had recently suffered the catastrophe of brother Henry's bank failure and had been disappointed by last will and testament of a wealthy uncle.
   So why the 11th-hour trip to Winchester? I incline toward the theory that it was because of a wish on Austen's part to put distance between herself and her mother. Austen's mother was thought to be a bit of a hypochondriac. Personally, I think a woman who has borne eight children deserves to be a hypochondriac if she wants to be. However I suspect the reality of her daughter's illness was something she was unwilling or unable to face. For a year, Austen herself had tried to minimize and dismiss her recurring symptoms and her slow decline. By the spring of 1817, the truth could no longer be hidden.