Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jane Austen was an English writer, born on the 16th of December 1775 and died on the 18th of July 1817. She is known primarily for her six novels, which interpret and critique the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century, often exploring women's dependence on marriage for social standing and economic security.
Jane Austen wrote six major novels: Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, Emma in 1816, and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1817. She also wrote the short epistolary novel Lady Susan and left the unfinished novels The Watsons and Sanditon.
Jane Austen's novels were published anonymously because writing was regarded as a degrading activity for women at the time, so books by women were issued anonymously to maintain the idea that the female writer was not seeking celebrity. Sense and Sensibility was described as written "By a Lady," and her name never appeared on her novels during her lifetime.
Jane Austen made £140 from Sense and Sensibility and sold the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for £110. Had she published Pride and Prejudice on commission instead, she would have made a profit of £475, twice her father's annual income of £200.
Jane Austen died in Winchester on the 18th of July 1817 at the age of 41. Most biographers rely on Zachary Cope's 1964 retrospective diagnosis of Addison's disease, although her final illness has also been described as Hodgkin's lymphoma. She is buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral.
Cassandra Austen destroyed the bulk of the roughly 3,000 letters Jane wrote in her lifetime, leaving only about 160 to survive. One theory is that she wanted to ensure younger nieces did not read Jane's sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours or family members.
Jane Austen's reputation rose significantly in the 1830s when Richard Bentley bought her copyrights and republished her novels in his Standard Novels series, which called her "the founder of a school of novelists." Her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 widened her fame, and by 1994 the critic Harold Bloom placed her among the greatest Western writers of all time.