Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English author, born on December 16th, 1775, in Steventon near Basingstoke. She was the seventh child of the rector of the parish and lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. This is where she remained, except for a few visits to London, until she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor in May 1817. Sadly, she died there on July 18, 1817.

As a girl, Jane Austen was already writing stories, including burlesques of popular romances. However, her works were only published after much revision. Four novels were published in her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). After her death, two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen. He revealed her authorship for the first time. Additionally, she left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which still survives.

Jane Austen is best known for her romantic fiction, which is full of social commentary that made her historically significant and kept her name alive almost two hundred years after her death. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Despite her literary achievements, she brought little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime. It was only in the late 19th and the 20th centuries that she gained widespread recognition and acceptance as a great English writer. Today, she is considered one of the most widely read writers in English literature, with her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.