Maria Edgeworth was born in Blackbourton, Oxfordshire, England on January 1, 1767. She was educated at a school in Derby, England and then attended a school in London. In 1782, she went to live with her father at Edgeworthstown and acted as his chief assistant and secretary in the management of his estates. She helped educate her brothers and sisters, and the stories she invented for them were later published under the title The Parents Assistant. Her novels and stories fall into three categories: sketches of Irish life, commentary on contemporary English society, and instruction in children's moral training. Her first work, Letters for Literary Ladies, a plea for the reform of woman's… education, was published in 1795. She would later collaborate with her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth on Practical Education and Essays on Professional Education. Her first novel, Castle Rackrent, was published in 1800. Her other works include Belinda, Moral Tales, The Absentee, and Helen. During the Irish famine (1845-1847), she did what she could to alleviate the suffering of the Irish peasants including having a large quantity of flour and rice sent over from Boston to give out among the starving. She died in 1849 at the age of 82.
Jane Austen's life is striking for the contrast between the great works she wrote in secret and the outward appearance of being quite dull and ordinary. Austen was born in the small English town of Steventon in Hampshire, and educated at home by her clergyman father. She was deeply devoted to her family. For a short time, the Austens lived in the resort city of Bath, but when her father died, they returned to Steventon, where Austen lived until her death at the age of 41. Austen was drawn to literature early, she began writing novels that satirized both the writers and the manners of the 1790's. Her sharp sense of humor and keen eye for the ridiculous in human behavior gave her works… lasting appeal. She is at her best in such books as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), in which she examines and often ridicules the behavior of small groups of middle-class characters. Austen relies heavily on conversations among her characters to reveal their personalities, and at times her novels read almost like plays. Several of them have, in fact, been made into films. She is considered to be one of the most beloved British authors.Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction set among the gentry have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English literature. She was born in Steventon rectory on 16th December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath and then to Chawton in Hampshire. She wrote from a young age and Pride and Prejudice was begun when she was twenty-two years old. It was initially rejected by the publisher she submitted it to and eventually published in 1813 after much revision. All four of her novels - Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) published in her lifetime were published anonymously. Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both 1817) were published posthumously.