Born in England on December 16, 1775, Jane Austen is widely admired for her novels about manners in eighteenth-century England. Austen's life is imbedded in the same social world as her characters—that of the "landed gentry" in England's countryside. Her father, George Austen, was a country clergyman in Steventon, Hampshire, who had advanced himself through ambition and intelligence. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was of much higher birth; one of her ancestors had been Lord Mayor of London under Queen Elizabeth I. "The Austen children,", writes Laura Dabundo in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, "grew up in a close-knit family, low on financial resources but strong on education and religious principles." Two of her brothers, James and Henry, found Careers in the Church of England, while two others, Francis and Charles, entered the Royal Navy and both eventually achieved the rank of admiral. Her brother...