Who was Jane Austen?
Q: Who was Jane Austen?
A: Jane Austen was an English novelist who wrote many books of romantic fiction about the gentry. She is now one of the most famous and beloved writers in English literature, and is considered to be one of the great masters of the English novel.
Q: When was she born?
A: Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke.
Q: What did her works criticize?
A: Her works criticized sentimental novels in the late 18th century, and were part of a change to nineteenth-century realism.
Q: How did her stories depict women's lives?
A: Her stories often depicted how women depended on marriage for social standing and economic security.
Q: Where did she live when her father retired?
A: When her father retired in 1801, they moved to Bath. After he died in 1805, she moved around with her mother before settling in Chawton near Alton, Hampshire in 1809.
Q: How many novels were printed while she was alive?
A: Only four of her novels were printed while she was alive; Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were printed in 1817 with a biographical notice by her brother Henry Austen.
Q: What did Jane Austen say about her own genius?
A: Jane Austen was very modest about her own genius; famously describing it as "the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory, on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labor".
