The English author Jane Austen lived from 1775 to 1817. Her novels are highly prized not only for their light irony, humor, and depiction of contemporary English country life, but also for their underlying serious qualities. The main source of information about Jane Austen's life is family letters, especially those of Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra from 1796 onwards, supplemented by family recollections which were generally not written down, however, until half a century after Jane Austen's death.
Portrait of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra.
Jane's parents were George Austen, who was a local clergyman in Steventon, Hampshire in the south of England and his wife Cassandra. Jane was the seventh child to be born having only one sister with the same name as her mother, Cassandra and six brothers. Aside from time away for boarding school, Jane spent her life at the home in Steventon until she was the age of 25.
Her father was in the middle of the local society regularly visiting the other gentry and middle-class families in the area calling on the poor when they were sick or need of help. Living in Steventon provided Jane with ample opportunites to pattern her novels after the day to day life surrounding her. She and her sister went to assemblies in the nearby town of Basingstoke and to balls at the large homes in the neighborhood. She became familiar with all levels of society and even with the military since she had brothers in both the army and navy.
As a quick and intelligent lady of her time, Jane read a lot, was a good pianist and loved to dance. As a girl she began writing and wrote stories one of which, in her teens, was her first novel called Elinor and Marianne, which was later renamed Sense and Sensibility upon revising. Soon after writing Elinor and Marianne, she wrote another novel entitled First Impressions whereupon her parents thought so highly of it they offered it to a publisher. The publisher rejected it but Jane revised it and gave it the new name of Pride and Prejudice.
George Austen retired about 1801 and moved the family to Bath and then to Southampton. He died in 1805 and his widow and daughters settled in the Hampshire village of Chawton in 1809. Jane had several admirers and one which proposed to marry her but she did not love him and turned him down. She remained unmarried for the rest of her life as did her sister Casandra.
Jane worked on the novels in the family sitting-room but wrote secretly hiding her manuscript whenever anyone near. In 19th century England, it was thought inappropriate for a woman from Jane's social standing to make money from her writing. Her novels were originally published anonymously much like books from other women writers of that time.
Her brother, Henry Austen, published Northanger Abbey and Persuasian postumiously in 1817 with a biography notice, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasian was written in a role against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sandition, a fragmentary draft of which survives.
Her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility in 1811, appeared with the title page reading "By a lady". Her second published novel was no further help because Pride and Prejudice was published with the byline "By the author of Sense and Sensibility." Her further novels read in successive note as: "By the author . . . " It was only after her death at the age of forty one that the public found out through her obituary that Jane Austen was the "Lady" who wrote these novels. Her first two novels were listed and the two-volume set of Northanger Abbey and Persuasian were published together in January 1818. Finally, her reading public knew her name.
The first novel sold was Northanger Abbey. In 1803 she was paid £10 by the London Publishers Richard Crosby and Co., who adverised her book but never published it.
At the age of twenty she met a young man named Tom Lefroy. She expected him to propose and it appears that she planned to accept. But his family seems to have talked him out of it. She was, after all, a penniless clergyman's daughter. Tom Lefroy went on to become the Chief Justice of Ireland and late in his life wrote that he had loved her with "a boys love."
From the unlikely setting of a family sitting-room, Jane produced six outstanding novels. Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1815. By 1816 her health was declining so she and Cassandra moved to Winchester where the writer was put in the care of the well known physcian Giles King Lyford. Jane's health continued to decline where she began to feel tired, weak and sick. It is now belived that she was suffering from Addison's disease, a kidney disorder. She died on 18 July 1817. Her last completed novel, Persuasion and an earlier one, Northanger Abbey were published after her death.
This watercolor is believed to be that of Ms Austen. The book, owned by Kent sculptor Simon Wheeler, was found by his father in a bookshop in Canterbury in the 1950s. It contains 47 watercolours and drawings by James Stanier Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent, who is known to have met Austen in 1815. 
The book failed to sale at the 8 June 2011 auction.