A Student's Guide to Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose insights into women's lives and her mastery of form and irony have made her one of the most noted and influential novelists of her time. Austen's novels address the courtship personalities and practices in the Regency period of England, but there is a universality to the stories that make them relevant beyond their time and place. In addition, Austen was a pioneer in the form of the novel itself-a genre which was not yet one hundred years old when she began writing.