From JASNA: brief biography and
chronology of Austen's works

Jane Austen, Britain's greatest female novelist, was born at Steventon, Hampshire, to George and Cassandra Austen on December 16, 1775. Her father was a Church of England clergyman who supplemented his income by taking in students. He also had a library of 500 books, so that Jane grew up surrounded by literature and learning. Besides reading (her favorite authors were Fielding, Richardson, Maria Edgeworth and Fanny Burney), she enjoyed the company of her six brothers and one sister, Cassandra, to whom she remained close all her life.

Between 1785-87, Jane attended school with Cassandra in Reading, England Upon her return she wrote her humorous Juvenilia, such as Love and Freindship [sic], which were dedicated to her family and friends and intended for private entertainment. In the years from 1795-99, she began work on the novels that would one day make her famous, Elinor and Marianne (Sense and Sensibility), First Impressions (Pride and Prejudice), and Susan (Northanger Abbey)—the second of these was rejected by a publisher in 1797. During this time, 1795-96, Mr. Tom Lefroy, later Chief Justice of Ireland, courted Jane, but was not wealthy enough to propose marriage.

Then, in 1800, the Austens moved to Bath and resided there until Mr. Austen's death in 1806, upon which the family's income was greatly reduced. After first living in Clifton, then in Southampton, Jane, her mother, and her sister finally settled in Chawton, Hampshire, in a cottage her brother Edward had made available for his female relatives. It was here that Jane returned to work on her novels.

After revision, Sense and Sensibility was accepted for publication in 1811, to be followed by Pride and Prejudice (the novel she called her "own darling child") in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma, dedicated to the Prince Regent, in 1815. Jane started writing her last novel, Sanditon, in early 1817, but it remained a fragment because she was by now suffering from the undiagnosed disease that took her life on July 18, 1817.

Jane was buried in Winchester Cathedral on July 24, 1817, and the site has since become a shrine for Janeites. She left her estate to Cassandra, who destroyed many of her sister's notes and correspondences, to the great dismay of future scholars. Like Cassandra, Jane never married. However, there is evidence that she might have had an amorous encounter during one of her summers by the sea in the early 1800s that inspired the episode between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in the 1817 novel Persuasion, which modern readers consider her finest book.