Jane Austen
(1775-1817), NovelistRegency Portraits Catalogue Entry
Sitter associated with 5 portraits
Few English novelists have commanded such popular affection and critical respect as the author of works including Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816). Austen was a writer of refinement and charm, whose honesty and sense of irony helped shape some of the supreme masterpieces of nineteenth-century fiction. The daughter of a clergyman, she never married, and lived quietly with her family in Hampshire and later Bath. Her six main novels made ordinary domestic life a compelling subject for fiction, drawing on her own observations of genteel social relations, courtship, and the position of women during the Regency. Austen compared her writing to painting literary miniatures on ivory.
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by Unknown artist
hollow-cut silhouette, circa 1800-1815
NPG 3181
by Cassandra Austen
pencil and watercolour, circa 1810
NPG 3630
published by Richard Bentley, after Cassandra Austen
stipple engraving, published 1870
NPG D1007
published by Richard Bentley, after Cassandra Austen
stipple engraving, published 1870
NPG D1008
published by Richard Bentley, after Cassandra Austen
stipple engraving, published 1870
NPG D13873
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