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about the age of twenty to five-and-twenty—that is, during the five last years of her life at Steventon—Jane had fairly taken up her pen, and worked really hard with it all the time. At least three of her best-known novels were written during this period, although, from their not having been published till much later, there is difficulty in fixing the exact dates of their composition. Pride and Prejudice, however, was begun in October 1796, when she was nearly twenty-one, and finished in August 1797. Three months after it was completed she began upon what we now know as Sense and Sensibility, but with which, as has been already said, she incorporated a good deal of an earlier story, Elinor and Marianne, originally written in letters. Northanger Abbey she wrote in 1798, soon after finishing Sense and Sensibility.

Even in the quiet life at Steventon, it is difficult to understand how Jane managed to combine so much literary work with all her household and social occupations, for so little was writing a serious business