Austen, Jane: - Jane Austen is best known as the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. She wrote as many as 3,000 letters during her lifetime, but only 161 survived (the recipient of these letters, her sister Cassandra, burned the majority of them; this was, ostensibly, to stop anyone from reading Jane's "sometimes acid or forthright comments on neighbours and family members").