AUSTEN, JANE

born Dec. 16, 1775, Steventon, Hampshire, Eng. died July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire Jane Austen, pencil and watercolour portrait by C. Austen, c. 1810; in the National Portrait English writer who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. Austen created the comedy of manners of middle-class life in the England of her time in such novels as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (published posthumously, 1817). Additional reading J.E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870), available in many later editions, is based on the writer's correspondence; the letters themselves are collected in Dierdre Le Fay (compiler and ed.), Jane Austen's Letters, 3rd ed. (1995). William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: A Family Record, rev. ed., enlarged by Deirdre Le Faye (1989), offers a more complete account. Other biographies include Elizabeth Jenkins, Jane Austen (1938, reprinted 1986); Marghanita Laski, Jane Austen and Her World, rev. ed. (1975, reissued as Jane Austen, 1986); David Cecil, A Portrait of Jane Austen (1978); John Halperin, The Life of Jane Austen (1984); and Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (1988). A wealth of information is found in J. David Grey (ed.), The Jane Austen Companion: With A Dictionary of Jane Austen's Life and Works (1986).Critical literature on Jane Austen's work by her contemporaries and later figures is collected and discussed in B.C. Southam (ed.), Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 2 vol. (196887), covering the years 18111940. Later modern critical approaches are collected in B.C. Southam (ed.), Critical Essays on Jane Austen (1968, reprinted 1979). Monographic interpretations include Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art (1939, reprinted 1979); Douglas Bush, Jane Austen (1975); Barbara Hardy, A Reading of Jane Austen (1975); Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975, reprinted 1987); Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (1952, reprinted 1974); Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (1986), concentrating on the social aspects of Austen's plots; and Deborah Kaplan, Jane Austen among Women (1992).