Jane Austen learnt her trade as a novelist writing for the amusement of her busy extended family, exploring the rapid social changes of Georgian England (a feature of her own life too) with both enthusiasm and caution. However, the death in 1805 of her father, a Hampshire clergyman, turned her settled life upside down.

To support herself, her sister and their widowed mother, Jane turned to her writing as a source of income. From 1811, a series of six novels was published including the evergreen ‘Pride and Prejudice’. However, in 1816 Jane’s health began to fail, and the following year she died at the home of a Winchester specialist, aged 41.

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