Today we remember Jane Austen, the British writer born on this date in 1775. Austen depreciated herself as a "miniaturist" and a domestic novelist of restricted scope, but her literary legacy is large. She was also able to lay self-deprecation aside, however, and in Northanger Abbey she declared that novels -- her chosen genre -- are works in which "the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."

Austen's work brims with general statements that are contradicted by the people in her stories. For instance, Pride and Prejudice opens by noting that "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." The book then describes Mrs. Bennett, mother of a household full of marriageable daughters as "a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper." As Austen acquaints us with the tale of each daughter's engagements, she wonders, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"