Jane Austen
Novelist · English · Romantic
Jane Austen
1775–1817
Free indirect discourse in her hands is a scalpel: you hear a character's vanity in the narrator's calm voice.
The life
Seven children in a Hampshire rectory; a father's library; a proposal accepted and retracted overnight; six novels written on a small table by a door whose creak she refused to have oiled, so that she could hide the pages when someone came. She died at forty-one, still published anonymously as 'A Lady'.
The writings
Novel
Novel · 1813
Pride and Prejudice
1813 · Comedy of manners · Romance
Elizabeth Bennet mistakes pride for contempt and wit for insight, and is corrected by a letter.
Novel · 1815
Emma
Jane Austen
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Emma
1815 · Comedy of manners
A heroine 'whom no one but myself will much like', busily ruining her neighbours' lives with kindness.
Novel · 1811
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Sense and Sensibility
1811 · Comedy of manners
Two sisters, two temperaments, one inheritance withheld.
Novel · 1817
Persuasion
Jane Austen
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Persuasion
1817 · Romance
A woman of twenty-seven meets the man she was persuaded to refuse.
