Select the Jane Austen Characters Quiz

Answer:

English born novelist Jane Austen lived from 1775 until 1817. The tragedy of this brilliant writer is that we know so very little of the real Jane - the girl, the woman, the novelist, her personality and character - because, on her death in 1817, her much loved sister, Cassandra, destroyed over 2,800 of Jane's letters, in order, she believed, to prevent her young nieces coming across Jane's "acid or forthright comments on neighbours or family members". What a loss to the world of literature. It is only through Jane's impeccable depictions of the many characters in her six published novels that we are able to get a glimpse of the author herself peering laughingly at us through the mists of time.

Jane could be forthright indeed with various of her characterisations, imbuing them with personality traits and less than desirable behaviour she witnessed in people around her in her day-to-day life. Yet she also gave us wonderful verbal portraits of characters made of pure gold, people to be emulated, portraits held up for her readers of all that is good in the human condition. Altogether she presents an entire range of wonderful characters from the worst to the best, in these works that she describes in one of her surviving personal writings as "being done with a fine brush on a 'little bit (not two inches wide) of ivory'" - a cameo, if you like, of life, love, laughter, manners and behaviour in the Georgian era of Britain.

Characters for this quiz were taken from five of Jane's novels: "Sense and Sensibility" (1811); "Pride and Prejudice" (1813); "Mansfield Park" (1814); "Emma" (1815); and "Northanger Abbey" (1817), which was published after her death. The characters from "Sense and Sensibility" were Margaret Dashwood, Edmund Bertram and Lucy Steele; those from "Pride and Prejudice" were Mary Bennet, Charles Bingley, George Wickham and Fitzwilliam Darcy; "Mansfield Park" gives you Fanny Price; "Emma" presents Jane Fairfax, Harriet Smith and Robert Martin; and "Northanger Abbey" introduces Catherine Morland.