Literature · 1775–1817
Born: 16 December 1775 · Died: 18 July 1817 · Age at death: 41
Jane Austen died aged 41. She was born on 16 December 1775 and died on 18 July 1817.
English novelist of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma, famed for her wit and portraits of love and class
Did you know?All of her novels were published anonymously during her lifetime, with her first book simply credited to "A Lady".
Jane Austen's novels look like gentle romances, but they are sharp, funny studies of money, class and the limited choices open to women. Her heroines, such as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, are clever and independent in a world that often expected women to stay silent. She wrote with irony and precision, letting readers see the gap between what characters say and what they mean. She lived quietly, mostly in Hampshire, and died at just 41. Today her face appears on the Bank of England £10 note, and her books are adapted again and again for film and television.
Jane Austen ( OST-in, AW-stin; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English writer known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Profile
English novelist, born 1775
Jane Austen was born in Steventon on 16 December 1775.
She wrote Pride and Prejudice and Emma.
Her novels were published anonymously.
She died in Winchester in 1817.
Career highlights
Did you know?She appears on the Bank of England £10 note.
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