Jane Austen
1775–1817 · English novelist, author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma.
Jane Austen was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, George Austen, was the rector; she was the seventh of eight children. She was educated mainly at home, read widely in her father's library, and as a girl wrote comic stories and plays for her family's entertainment, such as Love and Freindship, whose misspelling is her own. In 1801 the family moved to Bath, and after her father's death in 1805 Jane, her mother and her sister Cassandra moved several times before settling in 1809 in a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, provided by her brother Edward. There she revised and published her novels, which appeared anonymously: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). They portray the lives, courtships and manners of the English gentry with wit and irony. Austen never married. She fell ill in 1816 and died in Winchester in 1817, aged 41. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published after her death, when her brother Henry revealed her name to readers.
Jane Austen is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Daughter of an Anglican rector. Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Jane Austen: A Very Short Introduction by Tom Keymer (Oxford University Press, 2022), ISBN 9780191038822
Key dates
- 1775 Born in Steventon, Hampshire
- 1801 Family moves to Bath
- 1809 Settles at Chawton
- 1811 Sense and Sensibility published
- 1813 Pride and Prejudice published
- 1815 Emma published
- 1817 Dies in Winchester
See where they lived
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Jane Austen spent her last eight years at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire, where she wrote or revised all six of her novels. (Her childhood home, Steventon rectory, no longer stands.) Jane Austen’s House runs school visits and virtual learning sessions.
Fun facts
- She read each of her novels aloud to her family while she was writing it. (Source: Jane Austen (Wikipedia))
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Read about them
Grades 9–12
- Pride and Prejudice · In the library
- Sense and Sensibility · In the library
- Northanger Abbey · In the library
- Mansfield Park · In the library
- Emma · In the library
- Persuasion · In the library
- Love and Freindship and Other Early Works · In the library
More lives
Edwin A. Abbott · Jane Addams · Louisa May Alcott · Hans Christian Andersen · Honoré de Balzac · J. M. Barrie