Jane Austen

Jane Austen spent her short life in Hampshire, near the south coast of England. Her novels describe the everyday life of people in the upper-middle class circles she knew best. Money and social position were very important and the only role of a woman of that class was to find a rich husband.

Her characters spend most of the time in the countryside, doing little or no work. Occasionally they go to London; sometimes they go to Bath, a fashionable town. Her novels may sound boring, but they are a record of what life was like for the upper-middle class in the early nineteenth century and are among the finest and most entertaining novels written at the time.

Michael Vaughan-Rees, Geraldine Sweeney, Picot Cassidy: In Britain. 21^st Century Edition, Cornelsen Verlag, 2000, page 51