Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was rector, and drafted early versions of her novels in her twenties: Elinor and Marianne (later Sense and Sensibility), First Impressions (begun in 1796, later Pride and Prejudice) and Susan (later Northanger Abbey, a satire of Gothic fiction). Publication came slowly. Her father wrote to a London publisher about First Impressions in 1797, and in 1803 the publisher Crosby paid £10 for Susan and then never printed it. She was 35 before Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811, credited only to “A Lady.”

Four novels came out anonymously in her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published together in December 1817, months after her death in Winchester at 41. Her plots turn on women's dependence on marriage for security and social standing. She was the first English novelist to use free indirect speech extensively, which lets her narration slip into a character's thoughts while keeping control of the irony.

Start with Pride and Prejudice. It is her best-known book, and the sparring between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy is the easiest way into Austen's irony, since the comedy works even before you are used to the period manners. Follow it with Persuasion, her last completed novel, for contrast: Anne Elliot is 27, and the story picks up almost eight years after she was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth.

Emma comes next. Before writing it, Austen said she would take “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” and the opening sentence introduces Emma Woodhouse as “handsome, clever, and rich.” Save Mansfield Park, which follows Fanny Price from age ten into early adulthood, for when you know her style.