Jane Austen for kids: her life, writings, and world, with 21 activities

Often compared to William Shakespeare, Jane Austen's genius was her cast of characters - so timeless and real that readers know them in their own families and neighbourhoods today.

Her book's universal themes - love and hate, hope and disappointment, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility - still tug at heartstrings in cultures spanning the globe.

Jane Austen lived during some of the most important events in history - the American Revolution, the French Revolution, British expansion in India, and the Napoleonic Wars.

She wrote about daily life in England as she knew it, growing up a clergyman's daughter among the upper class of landowners, providing readers with a window into the soul of a lively, imaginative, and industrious woman in an age when most women were simply obscure shadows among society.