Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, in England. Her father, an Anglican clergyman, encouraged her literary pursuits from a young age and by her mid-twenties, Austen had drafted three novels. Following the success of Sense and Sensibility in 1811, she went on to publish Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously in 1818. Despite her fondness for marriage plots–all six of her novels end in weddings–Austen never married, living with her mother and sister in the years leading up to her death. She died on July 18, 1817, in the city of Winchester. Over two centuries later, Austen’s novels remain beloved classics, and she is considered one of the foremost writers in English literary history. Donald J. Gray is Professor Emeritus and Culbertson Chair Emeritus of English at Indiana University. He is the coeditor of the fourth Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice and of the anthology Victorian Poetry and Prose and has written on Victorian poetry and fiction, popular journalism, and the history of literary publishing. Mary A. Favret is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of War at a Distance: Romanticism and the Making of Modern Wartime and Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics and the Fiction of Letters and co-editor, with Nicola J. Watson, of At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Feminist and Materialist Criticism.
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