Jane Austen (17751817) is often regarded as the greatest of English women novelists on the strength of her six completed novels. Noted particularly for their sparkling social comedy and accurate vision of human relationships, they are still as widely read today as they have ever been. The seventh child of a country parson, Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire. Her father, the Reverend George Austen, was an intelligent and sensitive man who encouraged Jane in her lov