Jane Austen was born at Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. She was the seventh of eight children of Reverend George and Cassandra Leigh Austen. Austen was very closed to her by three years elder sister, Cassandra, who was the only person that Jane wanted read her written work and constantly asked for her opinion. (Magill Critical Survey of Short Fiction 119-120)

From about the time she was twelve years old, Austen began writing spirited parodies of the popular Gothic and sentimental fiction of the day for the amusement of her family, but her attempts at more sustained and serious work began around 1794. At first the form of her work was a novel in letters, which was a popular form at the time. Such was the form of her novel "Sense and Sensibility", an epistolary work that was completed between the years 1795 and 1797, entitled...