Jane Austen (16 December 1775 - 18 July 1817) was an English novelist. She wrote many books of romantic fiction about the gentry. Her works made her one of the most famous and beloved writers in English literature. She is one of the great masters of the English novel. Austen's works criticized sentimental novels in the late 18th century, and are part of the change to nineteenth- realism. She wrote about typical people in everyday life. This gave the English novel its first distinctly modern character. Austen's stories are often comic, but they also show how women depended on marriage for social standing and economic security. Her works are also about moral problems. Jane Austen was very modest about her own genius. She once famously described her work as "the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory, on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labor." She had been working on a new novel, Sanditon, but she died before she could finish it. She is now a well known great writer.