AUSTEN, JANE (1775-1817).--Novelist, _dau._ of a clergyman, was _b._ at
the rectory of Steventon near Basingstoke. She received an education
superior to that generally given to girls of her time, and took early to
writing, her first tale being begun in 1798. Her life was a singularly
uneventful one, and, but for a disappointment in love, tranquil and
happy. In 1801 the family went to Bath, the scene of many episodes in her
writings, and after the death of her _f._ in 1805 to Southampton, and
later to Chawton, a village in Hants, where most of her novels were
written. A tendency to consumption having manifested itself, she removed
in May, 1817, to Winchester for the advantage of skilled medical
attendance, but so rapid was the progress of her malady that she died
there two months later. Of her six novels, four--_Sense and Sensibility_
(1811), _Pride and Prejudice_ (1813), _Mansfield Park_ (1814) and _Emma_
(1816)--were _pub._ anonymously during her life-time; and the others,
_Northanger Abbey_--written in 1798--and _Persuasion_, finished in 1816,
appeared a few months after her death, when the name of the authoress was
divulged. Although her novels were from the first well received, it is
only of comparatively late years that her genius has gained the wide
appreciation which it deserves. Her strength lies in the delineation of
character, especially of persons of her own sex, by a number of minute
and delicate touches arising out of the most natural and everyday
incidents in the life of the middle and upper classes, from which her
subjects are generally taken. Her characters, though of quite ordinary
types, are drawn with such wonderful firmness and precision, and with
such significant detail as to retain their individuality absolutely
intact through their entire development, and they are never coloured by
her own personality. Her view of life is genial in the main, with a
strong dash of gentle but keen satire: she appeals rarely and slightly to