(1775-1817) English novelist. She described her raw material as “three or four families in a Country Village”. Sense and Sensibility was published 1811, Pride and Prejudice 1813, Mansfield Park 1814, Emma 1816, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion 1818, all anonymously. She observed speech and manners with wit and precision, revealing her characters’ absurdities in relation to high standards of integrity and appropriateness.
She was born at Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was rector, and began writing early; the burlesque Love and Freindship (sic), published 1922, was written 1790. In 1801 the family moved to Bath and after the death of her father in 1805, to Southampton, finally settling in Chawton, Hampshire, with her brother Edward. Between 1795 and 1798 she worked on three novels. The first to be published (like its successors, anonymously) was Sense and Sensibility (drafted in letter form 1797–98). Pride and Prejudice (written 1796–97) followed, but Northanger Abbey, a skit on the contemporary Gothic novel (written 1798, sold to a London publisher 1803, and bought back 1816), did not appear until 1818. The fragmentary Watsons and Lady Susan, written about 1803–05, remained unfinished. The small success of her published works, however, stimulated Jane Austen to write in rapid succession Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and the final fragment Sanditon, written 1817. She died in Winchester, and is buried in the cathedral.