Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in a country parsonage in Hampshire, England. She was one of eight children in a lively, book-loving family. Her father kept a large library, so Jane read widely and started writing young, filling notebooks with witty stories to amuse her family. She never married, though she once accepted a proposal and took it back the next morning. She lived quietly, mostly with her mother and her beloved sister Cassandra. Together they moved from Steventon to Bath and finally to the village of Chawton, where she did her best work.