Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

Biography

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England, the seventh of eight children of a country clergyman, and grew up in a lively, book-loving household where she began writing stories as a girl. She published Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice anonymously, followed by Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, novels of courtship, money, and manners that are now counted among the greatest in English literature. Her heroines, including Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse, navigate a world where a woman’s security depended on marriage, and her irony and precision made her a master of the comedy of manners. She never married and died young, at forty-one, in Winchester, England, in 1817, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. Her six novels have inspired countless adaptations for stage and screen, and Pride and Prejudice remains one of the world’s best-loved books.