Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England in 1775, to George and Cassandra Leigh Austen. She is generally considered to be the first great British female novelist. She had five brothers and one sister, Cassandra. A dedicated observer of human nature and quite knowledgeable in subtle sarcasm, Austen might have been one of the first novelists to shed light on abuse within the family. She was educated at home and began writing by the time she was 10 years old. She lived through the Boston Tea Party, the Treaty of Versailles, Great Britain's wars against France, and the Franco-Russian Alliance against England before she died in 1817.