Austen, Jane

Jane (1775-1817), an English novelist. Her father was a rector who gave his daughter the best education at his command. Her novels read now seem to make much of little and to be the product of an amiable, refined, commonplace mind. The chief are Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Miss Austen was buried at Winchester. Walter Scott was pleased to say of her work: "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, feelings, and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I have ever met with. The big bow-wow I can do myself like anyone going; but the exquisite touch, which renders common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me."