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Jane Austen (1775-1817)
 Best
known as
the author of Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen's novels were witty, warm and ironic portraits
of the privileged classes of 18th- and 19th-century England.
Her best-known works are Emma (1815), Pride and
Prejudice (1813) and Sense and Sensibility
(1811), though due to the status of women authors at the
time, most of her novels were published anonymously. Austen
was one of eight children of an English clergyman, and given
the accomplishments of her novels she lived a remarkably
quiet and domestic life in the rural south of England. She
never married and was only 41 when she died. The Pride
and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her dashing
suitor Mr. Darcy are one of the more famous couples in
English fiction.
Austen has long been a
favorite of Hollywood; recent movie adaptations include Pride
and Prejudice (2005, with Keira
Knightley), Emma (1996, with Gwyneth
Paltrow) and Sense and Sensibility (1995, with
Emma Thompson and Kate
Winslet). The 1995 Alicia
Silverstone movie Clueless is considered a
whimsical remake of Emma... The exact cause of
Austen's early death has never been clear. In the last year
of her life she suffered from fatigue, back pain, nausea and
fevers as she gradually faded away. Addison's disease,
Hodgkin's disease and tuberculosis have all been suggested
as possible causes by modern-day scholars.
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