Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist whose six novels comment wryly on the late-eighteenth-century landed gentry. Born at Steventon, Hampshire, a rector's daughter, she wrote stories for her family from about eleven. An early novel was declined by a publisher in 1797; another, sold in 1803 and never printed, she bought back in 1816.

She was thirty-five when Sense and Sensibility appeared anonymously in 1811, followed by Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). They were moderate successes that brought her no fame, and explore women's dependence on marriage for security.

She rewrote the ending of Persuasion in 1816 and began Sanditon in 1817, stopping after twelve chapters. Taken to Winchester for treatment, she died on 18 July 1817, aged forty-one; her cathedral epitaph praises her character but never mentions her books. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published after her death.