Born in 1775, at a time that saw the confluence of numerous, burgeoning revolutions—revolutions of thought (the beginning movements towards Romanticism), revolutions of manufacturing (the beginning stages of the Industrial Revolution), and revolutions of society and government (the beginning stages of the American Revolution which would bear fruit in France twenty years later)—Jane Austen lived the quintessential, small-town, isolated existence, seemingly insulated from all these various shifts in the world.
The seventh of eight children born to a parish rector, Austen lived a quiet life defined by the class to which she was born, by the fact of being female in a stiflingly patriarchal society, and by the economics that influenced a woman's chances for matrimonial bliss. As a rector, her father was respected and lived a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, able to provide for his family, but the constraints were many. Women in the middle-class who wished to maintain a respectable pace in society really had very few options in life beyond marriage or spinsterhood. If married, their life consisted of raising the children and managing the economy of the household; if unmarried(a burden to their parents or oldest brother who generally inherited whatever land there was along with the majority of money and possessions), they would generally live at home could get work sewing or they could move out and get work (like Jane Eyre) as a governess (a glorified babysitter/tutor).
Austen's father, being a member of the clergy and father to six sons, had little to offer in way of a dowry to entice potential suitors for his two daughters—neither of whom ever married. With his limited funds (still way beyond those of the working middle class), George Austen was only able to send his eldest son to university, where he trained for a life in the clergy. His third son (who supplanted his older brother in the order of importance because of a handicap that prevented him from making his own way in the world) was blessed by being taken under the wing of his wealthier cousins, the Knights (related to him through his mother's family). Rev. Austen's remaining sons had no other option for respectability other than joining the British military (though the fourth son was finally able to make it to Oxford and eventually the clergy, via a stint as a banker). His daughters lived their lives with their parents or in the houses their brothers, indulging their artistic inclinations (Jane's older sister, Cassandra, named for their mother, indulged in illustrating and painting). Each had offers of marriage which dissolved due to finances or lack of true passion.
Jane Austen's youth was relatively comfortable and she (along with her elder sister) received instruction in art and music, but Austen found herself drawn to literature. She read extensively from her father's private and relatively extensive library of over 500 books. Among her favorites, were writers such Samuel Richardson and Frances (Fanny) Burney. At an early age—eleven or younger—she composed satirical pieces on the history of England and wrote plays she and her siblings would perform for the family. As she entered her twenties, she began writing works of novel length ("Elinore and Marianne" and "First Impressions"), but in the epistolary style of her favorite authors. Whether or not her failure in getting these early pieces (which would be written as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, respectively) inspired her move away from the epistolary form, none of the five novels that would be published in her lifetime (nor the one the year following her death) would be of that style.
Her works show the influence of the Neoclassical style, greatly focusing upon the structure of society, yet with a distinctly Romantic interest in the inner and emotional lives of her characters. That said, her presentation of these emotions almost always follows the Enlightenment ethos that saw uncontrolled, unrestrained emotions as harmful to the individual (and perhaps society). Though she wrote during the height of the Romantic period in English literature, nature is not frequently depicted in her work, and when it is, it is a sculpted, structured garden, not the wild, desolate nature of works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the Brontë sisters' magnum opi, Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. Austen's works are mainly focused on society—that is, the small society of small towns—and on the lives of the families—mainly the females of the family and their struggles to find husbands and respectability. Readers of Austen's works would do well to study her depiction of character (which is, at least in her main characters, finely nuanced and psychological). Her works endure because of the blend of characterization, complex conflict development, and happy plotlines.