Jane Austen

1775–1817
Portrait of Jane Austen in a bonnet, seated
Engraving after a sketch by her sister Cassandra (1873)

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Steventon, a village in Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of a country clergyman. She began writing as a girl, to make her family laugh, and never married.

Her novels came out without her name, 'By a Lady': Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park, Emma and, after her death in 1817 at forty-one, Persuasion. They are about young women, money and marriage, and are still among the most loved novels in English.

Jane Austen on the site

Pride and PrejudicePublished in 1813 About 9 hours read Mrs. Bennet has five unmarried daughters and one aim in life: to see them married. When a rich young bachelor, Mr. Bingley, takes the great house nearby, she is delighted. His proud friend Mr. Darcy is another matter: at the first ball he refuses to dance with the second daughter, Elizabeth, and she hears him say why. Jane Austen's 1813 novel of first impressions, and of the two people who get each other most wrong.
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