Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Hampshire, and little is known about her personal life. Her sister, Cassandra, burned most of Jane’s letters in an effort to protect her privacy. What remains are her novels—elegant, incisive, enlightened portraits of the strange world of the English gentry. You know the names: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817). To mark the 250 years since Austen’s birth, the actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola will join writers—among them, Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Jennifer Egan—for readings and a conversation that covers the mysteries of Austen’s life and her enduring legacy. —Elena Clavarino