Reception history of Jane Austen a responsible land-owner taking care of his family's ancient estate and Emma Woodhouse symbolising wealth cut off from any sort of social role. David Kaufmann in his 1992 essay "Propriety and the Law" argued that Austen was a classical liberal in the mold of Adam Smith, who felt that virtue was best exercised in the private sphere of the family life rather than in the public sphere of politics. Kaufmann rejected the claim that Austen was influenced by Edmund Burke, arguing that for Austen, virtue was not something passed down from time immemorial from a landed elite as Burke would
Jane Austen and Prejudice" to more recent productions like "Sense and Sensibility" (1995), "Emma" (1996), "Mansfield Park" (1999), "Pride & Prejudice" (2005), and "Love & Friendship" (2016). There is little biographical information about Jane Austen's life except the few letters that survive and the biographical notes her family members wrote. During her lifetime, Austen may have written as many as 3,000 letters but only 161 survived. Many of the letters were written to Austen's older sister Cassandra, who in 1843 burned the greater part of them and cut pieces out of those she kept. Ostensibly, Cassandra destroyed or censored her sister's letters