Quotes by Jane Austen

Jane Austen published four novels anonymously in her lifetime and two more after her death at forty-one. She wrote in a family sitting room about a very small slice of English gentry, and got more out of it than most writers get out of a war: money, marriage, class and the difficulty of knowing another person. The irony is the engine. Her most quoted lines are the opening sentences, which set a trap the rest of the book then springs.