Jane Austen (born 16 December 1775, died 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known mainly for six novels about the landed gentry of late eighteenth-century England, among them “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma”. Her plots often turn on the dependence of women on marriage for social standing and economic security.
Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father George Austen was rector. From at least the age of eleven she wrote poems and stories to amuse her family, and she later copied twenty-nine of these early pieces into three notebooks now known as the Juvenilia. Between 1793 and 1795 she wrote “Lady Susan”, a short novel in letters, and by 1799 she had drafted the books that became “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey”.
Her father retired and moved the family to Bath, where she wrote little and abandoned a novel later titled “The Watsons”. He died in 1805, and in 1809 Austen, her mother and her sister Cassandra settled in a cottage at Chawton owned by her brother Edward. There she became a published author. “Sense and Sensibility” appeared in October 1811 from Thomas Egerton, credited only to “A Lady”, followed by “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) and “Mansfield Park” (1814). John Murray published “Emma” in December 1815. Her name never appeared on her books during her lifetime.
Austen died in Winchester at the age of 41 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” were published together in December 1817, with title pages dated 1818 and a biographical note by her brother Henry that identified her as the author for the first time. “Lady Susan” and “The Watsons” were first printed in 1871, and “Sanditon”, the novel she left unfinished in March 1817, in 1925.
The first film adaptation was MGM’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1940) with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. Later versions include the 1995 BBC serial with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), for which Emma Thompson won an Academy Award, Joe Wright’s “Pride & Prejudice” (2005) and “Love & Friendship” (2016), a film of “Lady Susan”. Austen has appeared on the Bank of England £10 note since 2017.
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Sense and Sensibility | 1811 |
| Pride and Prejudice | 1813 |
| Mansfield Park | 1814 |
| Emma | 1815 |
| Northanger Abbey | 1817 |
| Persuasion | 1817 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Lady Susan | 1871 |
| The Watsons | 1871 |
| Sanditon | 1925 |
Publication Order of Juvenilia
| Love and Freindship | 1922 |
Photo: Cassandra Austen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).