Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England (near Basingstoke). She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827 (née Leigh). (See the silhouettes of Jane Austen's father and mother, apparently taken at different ages.) He had a fairly respectable income of about £600 a year, supplemented by tutoring pupils who came to live with him, but was by no means rich (especially with eight children), and (like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) couldn't have given his daughters much to marry on.

More than one reader has wondered whether the childhood of the character Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey might not reflect her own childhood, at least in part -- Catherine enjoys "rolling down the green slope at the back of the house" and prefers cricket and baseball to girls' play.

In 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra went briefly to be taught by a Mrs. Cawley (the sister of one of their uncles), who lived first in Oxford and then moved to Southampton. They were brought home after an infectious disease broke out in Southampton. In 1785-1786 Jane and Cassandra went to the Abbey boarding school in Reading, which apparently bore some resemblance to Mrs. Goddard's casual school in Emma. (Jane was considered almost too young to benefit from the school, but their mother is reported to have said that "if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too".) This was Jane Austen's only education outside her family. Within their family, the two girls learned drawing, to play the piano, etc. (See "Accomplishments" and Women's Education.)

Jane Austen did a fair amount of reading, of both the serious and the popular literature of the day (her father had a library of 500 books by 1801, and she wrote that she and her family were "great novel readers, and not ashamed of being so"). However decorous she later chose to be in her own novels, she was very familiar with eighteenth century novels, such as those of Fielding and Richardson, which were much less inhibited than those of the later (near-)Victorian era. She frequently reread Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, and also enjoyed the novels of Fanny Burney (a.k.a. Madame D'Arblay). She later got the title for Pride and Prejudice from a phrase in Burney's Cecilia, and when Burney's Camilla came out in 1796, one of the subscribers was "Miss J. Austen, Steventon". The three novels that she praised in her famous "Defense of the Novel" in Northanger Abbey were Burney's Cecilia and Camilla, and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda
Much of Austen's life was reflected in her work. For example, the boarding school attended by Jane and her older sister may have had an influence on the one depicted in the novel Emma. There has also been speculation that the tomboyish character of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey may have been based on Austen's own childhood.

Always an avid reader, Austen wrote the original drafts of her now-classic works Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey between 1795 and 1799. Her success as a novelist began early into the 19th century, when Sense and Sensibility was accepted for publication around 1810, followed by Pride and Prejudice in 1812 (under the working title of First Impressions).

Austen continued writing into the following century, with Emma and Pursuasion written around 1815, despite her declining health.

It is documented that Austen enjoyed socializing and attending dances, although Austen herself never married. Nor did her older sister Cassandra, the only other girl in the family, although she had at one point a fiancé who died from yellow fever. Like some of the characters in her novels, such as Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, her father simply could not afford to marry them off, as was the custom in that day. She did receive a marriage proposal from a younger man that she accepted despite her lack of feelings for him. The engagement was quickly broken, something which her family found absolutely scandalous.

Towards the end of her life, Austen began work on the novel Sandition in 1917 but had to stop after only a couple of months due to her health. The exact ailment from which she suffered is not known. She created a will that left almost everything to her sister before dying on July 18th, 1817 at the age of 41.

Jane Austen's work has stood the test of time because of her elegant, graceful prose that depict English middleclass life so beautifully. Her writing contains elements of humor and wit, while her female characters, like Emma, are often strong-willed and articulate. For these reasons, Austen's novels are not only excellent examples of 19th century English women's fiction, but also examples of historical fiction (with possible autobiographical elements), and early feminist writing before feminism was even named as a movement.