Jane Austen(1775-1817),an English novelist, started writing young and completed six novels in her life. Today Austen's books are more popular than ever. In the last 10 years, five of her six novels have been made into Hollywood films, while her books continue to be best-sellers.

Richard Jenkyns, a professor of English at Oxford University, says that her novels are about marriage, friendships and the family, which are still with us today. “The stories are timeless," Jenkyns said.

Pride and Prejudice(偏见)(1813) is Austen's most famous work. It is a love story about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. At first, these two dislike each other. Elizabeth is pretty ,smart and lively. She is proud because Darcy doesn't know about her family.  Mr. Darcy is handsome, rich and has a better family background. So, he is proud as well. At the same time, Darcy holds a prejudice against the Bennet family. He has no understanding of why the family, especially its mother and daughters should try so hard to find wealthy and powerful husbands. He thinks they are vulgar. Anyway, Elizabeth and Darcy finally fall in love and become a romantic couple but their families don't want them to.

In Pride and Prejudice, some of the main things that Jane Austen wants to teach people are as follows.  Opposites can attract each other. Lovers should not ony make each other feel relaxed or comfortable, but also educate and improve each other.

 Austen is often called the greatest romanti writer, so it is surprising she remained unmarried. "Maybe she was too romantic, waiting for the perfect man,”Jenkyns says.

    When my brother and I were children, we spent a few weeks each summer in the countryside with our uncle. He was a geologist（地质学家） and loved to go on long walks to find stones to his collection in his spare time. We often followed him.

    One day, we left early, and this time, our uncle had bought us backpacks to help him carry the sample（样本）. The whole day, we walked around the countryside, and every now and then, our uncle put stones in our bags. We were a bit surprised that he also took some stones out from our bags at times, but we thought maybe he had just found better samples than the ones we already had.

    When we reached the house in the late afternoon, we were tired out. The backpacks were so heavy that we gave a big sigh of relief when we put them on the ground.

    Yet our uncle's backpack was half-empty.

    "Why did you give us so many stones?" we asked.

    "I didn't. You did, "he said, "You did not know it, but I made you go through a little attitude（态度） test today."

    "What do you mean an 'attitude test'?" we wondered. "It is something someone once did to me. You see, I listened to every word you said. And whenever you complained about anyone or anything, I added a stone to your bags. And whenever you talked about something with an attitude of gratitude（感恩） and positive（正面的） thinking, I took out a stone. And now look at your backpacks."

    We did. They were full.

    "Your negative（负面的） thoughts are like stones. You carry them in your mind just like those stones in a backpack. The more negative thoughts you have, the heavier your mind is. So look at those bags and start paying attention to what you say and how you say things."

    This little lesson was one of the most important I ever had. And I remember my uncle with great love for teaching us one of the most important lessons in life-the power of attitude.

    One morning, a hungry fox (狐狸) sees a chicken. He thinks, "Great! This is my breakfast." He comes up to the chicken and says, "Good morning, Miss Chicken. I hear you can sing very well. Can you sing a song for me?" The chicken is happy to hear that. She closes her eyes and begins to sing. The fox sees that and catches her in his mouth and takes her away. The farmers on the farm see the fox. They shout, "Look! Look! The fox is taking the chicken away." The chicken says to the fox, "Mr Fox, can you hear? The people say you are taking their chicken away. Tell them I am yours, not theirs." The fox opens his mouth and says, "Miss Chicken is mine, not yours." Just then the chicken runs away from the fox and flies into the tree.

    Mrs Brown is very fat. She has a lot of health problems. Her husband (丈夫) and she go to see the doctor. Her doctor says to her, "Don't eat meat and cakes.” Her husband says, "'I am going to make her stop eating them, doctor.” The next morning Mrs Brown buys a can of meat and her husband eats half (一半) of it. Then he leaves home to work. Mrs Brown cuts (切) a very small piece of it and eats it. It is very good. She cuts a big piece of cake and eats it. Ten minutes later she eats it all.

    "My husband will be angry. What shall I do?” she thinks. She buys another (另一个) can of meat very quickly.

    She eats half of that and leaves half on the table. Her husband comes back later and he sees the half meat on the table. He is very happy.