How Jane Austen conquered the world

Not long after Jane Austen’s death in 1817, at age 41, her brother Henry wrote a “Biographical Notice” to coincide with the posthumous publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. “Short and easy will be the task of the mere biographer,” he assured his sister’s readers. “A life of usefulness, literature, and religion was not by any means a life of event.”