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Jane Austen
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English novelist Jane Austen
Open book with Regency-era illustration of Jane Austen holding a book; large script “J. Austen” across; background of handwritten text.
Jane Austen's family Jane Austen's house A Guide to the Characters of Jane Austen Interactive map of the locations of Jane Austen's novels Sense and Sensibility Emma Pride and Prejudice “The most perfect artist among women”
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“The most perfect artist among women”
Jane Austen summary
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Nobel prize-winning American author, Pearl S. Buck, at her home, Green Hills Farm, near Perkasie, Pennsylvania, 1962. (Pearl Buck)
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Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) portrait by Carl Van Vecht April 3, 1938. Writer, folklorist and anthropologist celebrated African American culture of the rural South.
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English novelist Jane Austen
English novelist Jane Austen Jane Austen, a 19th-century engraving likely derived from a portrait by her sister, Cassandra Austen, c. 1810.

Jane Austen

The life and legacy of the great 19th-century English writer who defined the novel of manners.
Written by
Brian C. Southam
Publisher, Athlone Press, London. Author of Jane Austen's Literary Manuscripts; Tennyson; and others.
Brian C. Southam
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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•History

Jane Austen (born December 16, 1775, Steventon, Hampshire, England—died July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire) was an English writer who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). In these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published together posthumously, 1817), she vividly depicted English middle-class life...

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