A novelist who nourished readers with unforgettable characters, British author Jane Austen (1775–1817) was born on this day in the quiet village of Hampshire. The daughter of a parish minister, she grew up surrounded by conversation and books, encouraged from childhood to write, to notice, and to listen.

Fluent in French and Spanish, Austen carried a lifelong passion for books and reading. “Imagination is everything,” she once wrote — and her imagination transformed the everyday life of country parishes and drawing rooms into stories that still feel alive.

Her seven major works — Pride and Prejudice (1813), Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818), Persuasion (1818), and the shorter Lady Susan — have only grown more beloved with time. At the heart of each book stands a remarkable heroine, a woman of integrity who is intelligent, observant, generous, and quietly kind.

With a masterful pen, Austen captured the rhythms of daily life among the English gentry with clear honesty, subtle humor, and unhurried skill. She understood the fragile, shifting nature of memory. “The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient,” she wrote, “at others, so bewildered and so weak — and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control.”

Ironically, Austen published anonymously during her lifetime. Her books have never been out of print since. Film and television adaptations carried Elizabeth Bennet, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, and Anne Elliot into living rooms across the world. Suddenly, as one writer observed, it seemed “all about Jane.”

What might the mild-mannered Austen think of modern fame — board games, paper dolls, literary societies, and global fan devotion? Perhaps she would answer with her own wry words: “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and sometimes an indirect boast.”

What might the quiet Austen make of today’s fame — board games, paper dolls, devoted societies, and readers who carry her in their hearts? She would likely smile and offer her own wry words: “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and sometimes an indirect boast.”

More Jane AUSTEN Quotations