Persuasion and
Northanger Abbey (both 1817). In them, she created vivid fictional worlds, drawing much of her material from the circumscribed world of English country gentlefolk that she knew.
Life
Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight six boys and two girls. Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His wife, Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.
‘Lady Susan’: Novelist Shashi Deshpande on Jane Austen’s novel of the femme fatale (and her oeuvre)
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, and died on July 18, 1817. Jane Austen on a British £10 note. | Chris J Ratcliffe/ AFP
One needs to be either very brash, or a tremendous admirer of Jane Austen, to write about her. She has been so much written about by scholars and biographers that there seems to be nothing left to say. Every word she wrote has been picked up and scrutinised, its meaning probed, every action of hers, or even a lack of action, thoughtfully considered. For a woman whose life was, as has been universally agreed, uneventful, it is amazing how many books have been written about her.