Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh child of a country clergyman. Largely educated at home by her father, she began writing fiction as a young teenager and produced some of the most enduring novels in the English language before her death at forty-one. Her major works include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1817), and Persuasion (1817). Austen published her novels anonymously during her lifetime and received only modest recognition before her death. Her reputation grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century, and she is now regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English literary tradition, celebrated for her wit, irony, and penetrating insight into social manners and human character.