Austen, JANE, one of the greater English novelists, was born December 16, 1775, at Stevenston, Hampshire, of which parish her father was the rector. Here she spent the first twenty-five years of her peaceful life. She was the youngest of seven children, among whom she had but one sister, and of her brothers two ultimately rose to the rank of admiral in the navy. Her father, who used to augment a slender income by taking pupils, gave her a better education than was common for girls towards the close of the 18th century. Jane learned French and Italian, and had a good acquaintance with English literature, her favourite authors being Richardson, Johnson, Cowper, Crabbe, and, later, Scott. She sang a few old ballads with much sweetness, and was very dexterous with her needle. She grew up tall and remarkably graceful in person, with bright hazel eyes, fine features, rich colour, and beautiful brown curly hair. Her disposition was very sweet and charming, and she was an especial favourite with children, whom she used to delight with her long improvised stories. In her life there is a hint of an affection for a lover who died suddenly, but there is no trace of such a tragedy in her books, which are cheerful and wholesome throughout, free from anything morbid or bitter. In 1801 she went with her family to Bath, and after her father's death in 1805, removed to Southampton, and finally, in 1809, to Chawton near Winchester. She had written stories from her childhood, but it was here that she first gave anything to the world. Four stories were published anonymously during her lifetime—Sense and Sensibility in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1816. The first two were written before the gifted authoress was more than two-and-twenty years old. Early in 1816 her health began to give way. In the May of 1817 she came for medical advice to Winchester, and here she died two months later, July 18, 1817. She was buried there in the cathedral. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published in 1818, when the authorship of the whole six was first acknowledged. Jane Austen's novels are the earliest example of the so-called domestic novel in England, nor within their own limits have they been surpassed or even equalled since. No one was ever better acquainted with the limits of her own powers than this marvellous girl, and consequently all her work stands on the same high level of excellence. She speaks of the 'little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after so much labour.' The finest critics, with singular unanimity, have praised the delicacy of her touch, and her faultless work has called forth the most unqualified admiration from Southey, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, and Lord Macaulay. Sir Walter Scott wrote of her in his diary: 'That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, feelings, and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I have ever met with. The big bow-wow I can do myself like any one going; but the exquisite touch, which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.' Her world is the gentry in the England of her time, and she portrays its everyday life with marvellous truthfulness of insight. Her characters are perfectly distinct, and, spite of their old-fashioned dresses and quaint expressions, are more alive to us than many of the persons among whom we actually live.
See the Memoir by her nephew, J. E. Austen Leigh (2d ed. 1871); her Letters to her sister (1796-1816), edited by Lord Brabourne (1884); Miss Thackeray's (Mrs Richmond Ritchie's) Book of Sibyls (1883); and short Lives by Mrs Malden (1889), Goldwin Smith (1890), Oscar Fay Adams (Chicago, 1891; new ed. 1897), and Walter Pollock (1899).