Jane Austen

Born December 16, 1775 · Died July 18, 1817

From Steventon, England, United Kingdom · Nationality: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland · Writes fiction

Jane Austen was an English writer. Although Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupations of her bright, young heroines are courtship and marriage. Austen herself never married. Her best-known books include Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816). Virginia Woolf called Austen "the most perfect artist among women.

The books in Jane Austen's letters →

Austenbot: a Jane Austen AI

Talk with Austenbot, an AI that answers as Jane Austen, in her voice, from her books. It reads the full text of 9 of her books from Project Gutenberg, and her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh's 1871 memoir and G. E. Mitton's 1905 Jane Austen and Her Times. Words in quotation marks are truly hers, with the book and chapter.

Austenbot

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Quotes

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Pride and Prejudice
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
Letters
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”
Pride and Prejudice
“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”
Letters
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
Pride and Prejudice

Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Books by Jane Austen in order

Books by Jane Austen in the order they were published, from Sense and Sensibility (1811) to Razão e Sensibilidade - Orgulho e Preconceito - Persuasão (2019).

If you like Jane Austen

Fanny BurneyAn earlier novelist of manners and courtship; Evelina (1778) and Cecilia are often read alongside Austen for their social comedy and heroines' dependence on others.
Anthony TrollopeA later Victorian novelist of provincial society, money and marriage, with a similar interest in the everyday workings of social position.
Elizabeth GaskellWrites about domestic life, class and the position of women in a nineteenth-century English setting, in a more overtly social-problem mode.
George EliotShares Austen's interest in moral judgement and the consequences of a character's misreadings, in longer and more philosophical novels.
Barbara PymA twentieth-century comic novelist of English clergy, spinsters and unrequited attachments, often compared to Austen's social observation.
Charlotte BrontëA contemporary and sharp critic of Austen's restraint; readers who want stronger feeling and a more intense heroine often pick up Jane Eyre after Austen.

Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope
about 8 hours to read
Trollope's clerical comedy of ambition, rivalry and marriage prospects in a cathedral town will suit anyone who enjoyed the social maneuvering of Emma. The narrator's wry asides add to the fun.
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Cranford
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
about 4 hours to read
Cranford shares the gentle irony and close attention to small social codes that charm readers of Persuasion. Its genteel women in a provincial town are observed with affection and wit.
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Excellent Women
Barbara Pym
about 4 hours to read
Like Persuasion, Excellent Women follows a clear-eyed, unsentimental heroine whose quiet life is full of observation. Pym's dry humour about church, class and unrequited feeling is pure Austen-lovers' territory.
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Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons
about 4 hours to read
Gibbons satirises rural melodrama and literary affectation with the brisk, comic precision that makes Pride and Prejudice so enjoyable. Its sharp heroine and cheerful mockery of pretension will suit you.
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