Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in England, to George and Cassandra (Leigh) Austen. Her father was a clergyman in Steventon, a small town in Hampshire County. Her mother, whose ancestors were titled, was born into a higher social class. She and her husband settled into a comfortable but modest life, associating with the local gentry and raising eight children. Jane's close relationship with her siblings and her family's relationship with the local gentry would provide her with material for her plots and influence her creation of the settings and characterizations in her novels.

Austen received only five years of formal schooling; however, she continued her education at home. When she was in her teens, she wrote plays, verses, short novels, and other prose works, which were primarily parodies of sentimental fiction. Soon she began writing Elinor and Marianne, an early version of Sense and Sensibility...