Jane Austen (16 December 1775) was a British novelist whose realism, biting social commentary, and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature. Austen created the comedy of manners of middle-class life in the England of her time in her novels, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Northanger Abbey (1817) and Persuasion (1817).
Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism. Austen's plots, although fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Like Samuel Johnson, one of the strongest influences on her writing, her works are concerned with moral issues. She died in July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire. (Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica)
In popular culture, Austen's novels have been adapted in a number of film and television series, varying greatly in their faithfulness to the originals.
