4. Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon,Hampshire a small village in the south-west of England. Her earliest writings date from 1787: Sense and Sensibility published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice published in 1813. In 1798 she wrote Northanger Abbey which was published posthumously. She probably died of Addison’s disease in Winchester, in 1817 she was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

8. Pride and Prejudice (1813) is the most famous of Jane Austen’s novels. At the beginning of the 19 th century, the Bennets live in a small country village in Hertfordshire and have five daughters. Mrs Bennet has just one purpose in her life: to find husbands for her daughters, because if they don’t marry, according to the law, their estate will pass to a male relative. The heroine is the second of the daughters, Elizabeth, a girl with a strong personality. Her eldest sister is the gentle Jane, the others are Mary, Kitty and Lydia. Their calm life is shaken by the arrival of two rich gentlemen, Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy. Bingley falls in love with Jane, and Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth, even if he believes he is socially superior to her. This makes Elizabeth angry. Eventually, they overcome their pride and their prejudices, and the novel ends with the happy marriages of the two couples.