Title: Jane Austen
Thesis: Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.
i. Introduction
a. Thesis
b. Roles ii. Early life and education
a. Birth
1) Steventon, England December 16th 1775
2) Born to George and Cassandra Austen
b. School
1) She was home schooled along with her sister.
2) Both her parents were highly literate and educated. Father was an oxford-educated clergyman.
c. Teen years
1) Bachelor in Arts Degree Around 1787-1793 short works collectively called the juvenilia.
2) 1794, Lady Susan written but without a conclusion. iii. Juvenilia
a. Jane Austens early work
1) first full-length novel — Elinor and Marianne
2) Later published as sense and sensibility
3) Early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories, and plays for her own and her family's amusement
b. Achievements
1) Jane Austen successfully published four novels
2) All copies were sold within six months
3) Austen's earnings on this novel were larger than for any of her other novels. iv. Early novels
a. Austen began work on a second novel, First Impressions
b. She completed the initial draft in August 1797 when she was only 21
c. Later known as pride and prejudice
v. Adulthood
a. she practiced the fortepiano
b. she continued to live at her parents home
c. Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, England. Her father, Reverend George Austen (1731-1805) was the rector at Steventon. In 1764, he married Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739-1827) who was from a patrician family. Jane Austen was the youngest of George and Cassandra's eight children - she had six brothers and one sister. The family was tightly-knit, and Jane was particularly close to her sister, Cassandra, and her brother, Henry, who would later became her literary agent.

George and Cassandra Sr. sent Cassandra and Jane (who was only 8 years old at the time) to Oxford and Southampton to be educated. However, after Jane nearly died during an outbreak of typhus at their boarding school, both girls returned home to continue their studies. From 1785 to 1786, Jane and Cassandra attended the Reading Ladies Boarding School, where they studied French, spelling, needlework, music, and dancing. Economic hardships forced the girls to return home once again. Their father maintained a large library and indulged his daughters' curiosity with plenty of reading material. As a result, Jane and Cassandra continued to develop their literary talent despite their lack of a formal education.

Beginning in her teen years, Austen wrote poems, stories, and comic pieces for the amusement of her family. She compiled several of the pieces she wrote between 1787 and 1793 into three bound notebooks, which scholars now refer to as Austen’s “Juvenalia.” Austen expressed an interest in drama and comedy; she often staged theatrical productions at home with her siblings. As she continued to experiment with writing, Austen became adept at parodying the sentimental and Gothic style of eighteenth-century novels. Among Jane Austen's early works is a comic novel with the deliberately misspelled title, “Love and Freindship,” a satire of the “History of England,” and “Lady Susan," an epistolary work. During this time, Austen also began to sketch out ideas for the novel that would later become Sense and Sensibility.

In 1795, Austen met Tom Lefroy, the nephew of her neighbor at Steventon. In her letters to Cassandra, Austen wrote about spending a great deal of time with Lefroy and hinted at her romantic feelings for him. Unfortunately, a marriage between them was impractical, and LeFroy’s family soon sent him away. After the conclusion of her brief romance with Lefroy, Austen began work on a second novel called First Impressions, which would later become Pride and Prejudice. After that, Austen began to revise her initial