Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, a small village in Hampshire, England. As a girl, she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. She lived with her family in Steventon until her father, a clergyman in the Church of England, retired in 1801. After his death, in 1805, she, her mother, and her sister did not have a settled home until 1809, when they moved to Chawton, Hampshire. There she was extraordinarily productive, revising three novels and writing three more from scratch. Published during her lifetime were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Austen died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, where she was receiving medical treatment, and was buried in that city's cathedral. Two more novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1817 with a biographical notice by her brother Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. She also left two earlier compositions- a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives. Patricia A. Matthew is an English professor who teaches courses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture at Montclair State University. A specialist in the history of the novel, she writes about a range of topics for scholars and the general public. Her work has been published in academic journals, and she has written about Jane Austen, Bridgerton, and Sanditon for The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, and Slate. The coeditor of the Oxford University Press Series Race in Nineteenth-Century Literatures and Cultures, she is a regular lecturer for the Jane Austen Society of North America. She is currently writing a book on sugar, abolition, and material culture.
Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award Praise for Penguin Drop Caps: ""[Penguin Drop Caps] convey a sense of nostalgia for the tactility and aesthetic power of a physical book and for a centuries-old tradition of beautiful lettering."" —Fast Company “Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers…. Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections.” —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings ""The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations? Because they’re beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hische’s fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austen’s A (Pride and Prejudice) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Bronte’s B (Jane Eyre) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf."" —Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times ""Drool-inducing."" —Flavorwire ""Classic reads in stunning covers—your book club will be dying."" —Redbook