Who was Jane Austen — and why do her old novels remain timely to generations of readers?
How can we incorporate her work into our homeschool literature studies? A Sketchy Profile We know little of her life, though through her novels, we learn much about her times. Few accounts or diaries describe who she was. No correspondence with other prominent contemporary authors reveals her methods or motives in writing; in fact, she assiduously avoided meeting them. What we do know about her largely comes from what her loving family letters revealed. She was born on December 16, in 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire, the youngest of eight children, and the second daughter of a well-to-do Anglican clergyman, George Austen. He was a kind, intelligent man who was a scholar, and his wife, Cassandra, was an accomplished story teller and witty poet who delighted their intimate circle of friends. Both encouraged Jane’s love of reading. She read Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney and the poet George Crabbe. Good books, however, were expensive to buy and novels wer
