Jane Austen

Jane Austen ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817 was an English novelist requested primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, in addition to comment upon a British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often study the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of thehalf of the 18th century and are component of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of biting irony, along with her realism and social commentary, hold earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.

With the publication of Sense and Sensibility 1811, Pride and Prejudice 1813, Mansfield Park 1814, and Emma 1816, she achieved modest success and little fame in her lifetime, as the books were published anonymously. She wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818—and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died previously its completion. She also left behind: three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript; the short epistolary novel Lady Susan; and another unfinished novel, The Watsons.

Austen gained far more status after her death, and her six full-length novels develope rarely been out of print. A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's requirements Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and sold as a set. They gradually gained wider acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen presents a compelling explanation of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience.

Austen has inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired numerous films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions like Sense and Sensibility 1995 and Love & Friendship 2016.

Biographical sources

Little biographical information approximately Austen's life exists apart from the few letters that survived and the biographical notes her classification members wrote. During her lifetime, Austen may have or situation. as many as 3,000 letters, but only 161 survive. Her older sister Cassandra burned or destroyed the bulk of letters she received in 1843, to prevent their falling into the hands of relatives and ensuring that "younger nieces did not read any of Jane Austen's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours or variety members". Cassandra meant to protect the family's reputation from her sister's penchant for forthrightness; in the interest of tact she omitted details of family illnesses and unhappinesses.

The number one Austen biography was Henry Thomas Austen's 1818 "Biographical Notice". It appeared in a posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey, and forwarded extracts from two letters, against the judgement of other family members. Details of Austen's life continued to be omitted or embellished in her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and in William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh's biography Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, published in 1913, all of which refers additional letters. The legend the family and relatives created reflected their bias in favour of presenting the image of "good quiet Aunt Jane", the portrayal of a woman whose domestic situation was happy and whose family was the mainstay of her life. contemporary biographers add details previously excised from the letters and family biographies, but Austen scholar Jan Fergus explains that the challenge is to avoid presenting the opposite conception – one of Austen languishing in periods of deep unhappiness who was "an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family".