Jane Austen
The life
Jane Austen wrote six novels that turned the courtship plot into the sharpest instrument the nineteenth century had for examining money, class and self-knowledge. She lived quietly, at Steventon, Bath and Chawton, never married, and published anonymously; Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811 as the work of "A Lady." Her range is deliberately narrow and her precision is total. Nothing happens in an Austen novel that could not happen in a drawing room, and yet the stakes are absolute: a woman's entire future turns on an invitation, an income, a misread silence. The comedy is never decoration, it is how the judgement is delivered. She earned little in her lifetime and died at forty-one with Persuasion and Northanger Abbey still unpublished. She is now among the most read novelists in any language.
Lady Susan
72 pages — the shortest way into Austen, not the greatest.
MY DEAR BROTHER,—I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I…
