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Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice, was a comic novelist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She remains hugely popular today, and her work has been frequently adapted for film and television. The wry social commentary, caustic wit and surging emotions that fill her books have ensured their place as some of the greatest in English literature.
Born in 1775, Austen spent much of her life at Steventon rectory with her mother, father and seven siblings. Her home environment was intellectual and creative and young Jane's talent was nurtured through family word games, friendly literary competitions and amateur dramatic productions. She was largely educated there and had unrestricted access to her father's extensive library.
Austen wrote plays, stories and poems for her own and her family's amusement from an early age, and soon embarked upon serious novel writing. The first draft of Elinor and Marianne would later be revised and published as Sense and Sensibility
While we know that Austen did not marry, little is known about her personal or emotional life. In 1801 she accompanied her family in a move to Bath, where they stayed until 1805. Austen's time there inspired her first complete novel, Northanger Abbey, a satire on the popular Gothic novels of the 1790s. Jane's brother Henry helped Austen to negotiate with a publisher, Thomas Egerton, who was able to publish four of her novels within her lifetime. Sense and Sensibility was the first to appear in 1811, and after it Pride and Prejudice, which Austen described as her "own darling child". Mansfield Park was largely ignored by reviewers when it appeared in 1814, but was popular with the public. Emma followed in 1816, with a surprising dedication to the Prince Regent, an admirer of her work.
In 1816, Jane began to suffer from ill-health, probably due to Addison's disease. She travelled to Winchester to receive treatment, and died there on 18 July 1817. She remained true to her impeccable comic form right up until she died, dictating the humorous poem 'When Winchester races' on her deathbed.
Austen's final and perhaps most sophisticated novel, Persuasion was published posthumously along with Northanger Abbey. Her life began to fascinate readers as her novels grew in popularity after her death and the first biographies began to appear.
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