Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen was born in Hampshire in 1775, the seventh child and youngest daughter of George Austen, rector of Deane and Steventon, and his wife, Cassandra. She began writing poems, plays and stories for her family from a young age, and her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, was released by Thomas Egerton to sell-out acclaim in 1811. Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) followed, and these were the last of Austen’s works to come out in her lifetime. Her novels, including the posthumously published Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818), are today considered amongst the finest in the English language. She died at Winchester in 1817.
Sebastian Faulks’ books include Birdsong (1993; The Folio Society, 2008), Charlotte Gray (1998), On Green Dolphin Street (2001), Human Traces (2005), A Week in December (2009) and A Possible Life (2012). In 2011 he wrote and presented the four-part television series Faulks on Fiction for BBC2. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.