The first three of Miss Austen's novels were written at Steventon, among her innocent subjects, but her precious manuscripts went begging in vain for a publisher. [Footnote: _Northanger Abbey_, _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Sense and Sensibility_ were written between 1796 and 1799, when Jane Austen had just passed her twenty-first year. Her first novel was bought by a publisher who neglected to print it. The second could not be sold till after the third was published, in 1811.] The last three, reflecting as in a glass the manners of another parish, were written at Chawton, near Winchester. Then the good work suddenly began to flag. The same disease that, a little later, was to call halt to Keats's poetry of beauty now made an end of Miss Austen's portrayal of everyday life. When she died (1817) she was only forty-two years old, and her heart was still that of a young girl. A stained-glass window in beautiful old Winchester Cathedral speaks eloquently of her life and work. [Sidenote: NOVELS AND CHARACTERS] If we must recommend one of Miss Austen's novels, perhaps _Pride and Prejudice_ is the most typical; but there is very little to justify this choice when the alternative is _Northanger Abbey_, or _Emma_, or _Sense and Sensibility_, or _Persuasion_, or _Mansfield Park_. All are good; the most definite stricture that one can safely make is that _Mansfield Park_ is not so good as the others. Four of the novels are confined to country parishes; but in _Northanger Abbey_ and _Persuasion_ the horizon is broadened to include a watering place, whither genteel folk went "to take the air." The characters of all these novels are: first, the members of five or six families, with their relatives, who try to escape individual boredom by gregariousness; and second, more of the same kind assembled at a local fair or sociable. Here you meet a dull country squire or two, a feeble-minded baronet, a curate laboriously upholding the burden of his dignity, a doctor trying to hide his emptiness of mind by looking occupied, an uncomfortable male person in tow of his wife, maiden aunts, fond mammas with their awkward daughters, chatterboxes, poor relations, spoiled children,--a characteristic gathering. All these, except the spoiled children, talk with perfect propriety about the weather. If in the course of a long day anything witty is said, it is an accident, a phenomenon; conversation halts, and everybody looks at the speaker as if he must have had "a rush of brains to the head." [Sidenote: HER SMALL FIELD]