Jane Austen

Miss Austen now represents one of the greatest authors England has ever had. Like Shakespeare, the body of her work is constantly adapted, studied or admired. Not to mention that, these days, Jane Austen is quite a la mode. We do not have a great amount of details about her life. Most biographical information come from her own family circle, especially by the few letters her sister Cassandra left provided.

She was born on December 16, 1775 in Hampshire and had six brothers and one sister, her closest friend, Cassandra. Apart from a brief stay at Oxford in order for Jane and Cassandra to be educated, Jane stayed within the sphere of the family and learnt almost by herself, due to a lack of money. She loved reading and began writing at an early age. Her father was willing to let his daughters write – Jane's favourite pastime- or draw – which was Cassandra's. The former liked to entertain her own family with what she wrote, letting her now famously wit appear. In 1816, Jane Austen began to be ill. It seems that she ignored her illness at first and continued her habits but her health soon declined, she had great difficulties to walk or felt more and more tired. It kept going worse and she died eventually the following year, on July 18, 1817. Contemporary scientists and descriptions of her symptoms tend to either Addison's disease, a lymphoma or a bovine tuberculosis. She remained unmarried but nonetheless experienced the feelings she describes in her novels. She left us, readers, with a legacy made up of only six novels and a few unfinished writings. She began to write them around 1796, and yet they were published more later, from 1811 onwards. The first novel to be published was Sense & Sensibility and then in 1813 Pride & Prejudice came out. Her novels deal with women, their access to happiness in love, their part in society, and also their position when confronted with the law. However, they deal with morality, temper, sometimes with the influence of a place upon its inhabitants or they can mock the society and other pieces of writings.

Jane Austen enthralled many readers, and continues to do so. She has inspired many writers, and especially with Pride and Prejudice. Sequels or fictitious letters have been written by admirers and modern authors who wanted so much to see what could have been Elizabeth and Darcy's life after the end of the book that they imagined it. Or recently a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and a Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters came out riding on the wave of Jane Austen's popularity. As for me, I have them all, or almost...