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Jane Austen: life of the week
00:41:46
Lizzie Rogers charts the life of the Regency storyteller and social critic whose works continue to be cherished today
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Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. Jane Austen remains one of the most influential novelists in English history. Her social commentary, sharp wits and exploration of love, class and gender continue to captivate readers. Today, 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of her birth and a new BBC One drama. Ms. Austen is currently exploring her relationship with her sister Cassandra. So this seemed like the perfect moment to speak to historian and Jane Austen fan Lizzie Rogers to piece together her life from her cultured upbringing in a rural Hampshire village to the turbulent Bath years and beyond. Today we are going to be talking all about the life of Jane Austen. Now, she's quite an iconic character in history. Could you introduce us to her?
- [02:19]
A
Yeah, It's a funny one to introduce you to Jane Austen because I think her name kind of appears before she does, but to kind of get it down to its bare bones. Jane Austen is an author of six published novels, Finnish novels, who was born in 1775 and she died in 1817. She wrote some of the works that are adapted numerous times for TV today and that we read and reread, like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
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B
So you've given us a clue to when she Was born. But where was she born?
- [02:48]
A
So she was a Hampshire girl. She was born at Steventon in Hampshire in December of 1775. So, yeah, that was where she spent the first 25 years of her life, actually.
- [02:58]
B
And what was her family background like? How did this sort of shape who she was?
- [03:03]
A
Yeah, well, her family, I think, is really crucial to who she became. So her nephew ended up writing a memoir about her and he described Steventon in Hampshire, where she was born, as the cradle of her genius. It's quite a powerful phrase, I mean, when you learn more about it. So she was the seventh of eight children. The Austens were a big family. Her father was a rector at the parish of Steventon, that's why they were there. And she was only one of two girls in the Austen siblings. Her and her older sister Cassandra were amongst six brothers. One of their brothers, George, was brought up by a neighbouring family because he had some kind of disability and that was how they tended to care for people back then. But she was really surrounded by this kind of artistic, culturally rich environment. The family weren't well off, but I would say culturally they were. Her father had a library of what would of 300 books that her and her sister were allowed to indulge in whenever they wanted, which was actually quite rare for girls back then. And her whole family were interested in writing and performing and things like that. So she was writing and kind of putting bits and pieces together from a very, very young age. I always like to think of them as having kind of this crazy big imagination and the parents actually letting the imagination run wild, which I think is how she became this hugely popular and well remembered author that we now love today.
- [04:22]
B
Could you give us more about what it was like on the day to day basis of growing up in the Austen home?
- [04:28]
A
Yeah, so I think it would have been very busy, Very, very busy. So her older brothers, they all followed different professions. Some of them went into the navy, her younger brother did as well. Some of them went into the church. Her supposedly favourite brother, Henry had many careers. He'd worked in banking, the clergy, things like that. But the common thing they all really enjoyed was writing. So they would have written little pieces, performed them around the in the evening as entertainment. I mean, no Netflix back then. So that was kind of their equivalent of watching Netflix. But also, interestingly, to supplement his income, her father would take in students, so sons of local landowners, and he would teach them. So Jane and Cassandra actually spent only a couple of years informal schooling, but they spent so much time benefiting from These lessons going on in the background, having the run of this library that the Reverend George Austen had. So it would have been very busy. Lots of different things going on like that, and running between neighbourhood houses as well. They had a very strong parish of friends there. So, I mean, it's hard not to idealise this upbringing, but it would have been one that was kind of full of words, full of performance, full of family and friends as well.
- [05:35]
B
It seems like, from what you said, that Jane had quite a close relationship with her sister Cassandra. Is that the case?
- [05:43]
A
Yes. So they were very much best friends. I think there's a letter that her father wrote when he announced to a sibling Jane's birth, and he said something like, o, the new baby's been born. She used to be. I think he writes Jenny rather than Jane, as a kind of, like, affectionate shortening. And he said she used to be a plaything for Cassie. So right from her birth, they were really kind of preordained to be best friends. And other friends and relatives noted how close they were, and they ended up pretty much living together apart from when they were visiting other relatives and friends for the rest of their lives. So they really were each other's confidants and best friends, really, growing up in.
- [06:19]
B
This very cultural household. It lends to why Jane became a writer. When did she start her writing?
- [06:29]
A
So it's hard to say exactly when. Probably pretty much as soon as she could write, but she was writing little short stories, little skits. I mean, you can read her Juvenilia, and some of them, they're astonishing, they're really dramatic. And there's this story that she wrote called the Beautiful Cassandra, which I think we all know where she gets the name from for the title. And she writes this kind of really dramatic storyline where there's, like, drunkenness and affairs and all these kind of things. And she was probably in her early teens when she wrote this. So. Yeah, so a lot of her juvenilia is really full of all these, like, vibrant, really fun things. And one of the stories that I think most intrigues me, which is called Lady Susan, which is a short novel written in letters that was published way after she died. That's a really dramatic story. But she probably wrote that when she was about 16, 17, and you kind of look at it, and it's. The characters are really sophisticated and wicked and things like this. So it shows somebody who's been writing a long time and taking in the people around her, bouncing ideas off her friends and family. I mean, her and Cassandra wrote a history of England together, which was very much intended to be a jokey play on the histories of England that people were supposed to learn from at the time. I think Cassandra illustrated it with little watercolors. And Jane wrote this irreverent history, and at the beginning she writes, there are very few facts in this history, and it's by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian. So they were kind of having fun together and bouncing these things off. So she's pretty much doing this from a very, very early age.
- [07:57]
B
What do you think these early works say about her personality? Cause this speaks of wit and humour. This.
- [08:03]
A
Yes. This is the thing that I always really love to talk about with Austen, because I think we sometimes don't appreciate how funny she was and how witty and clever she was. She was so astute, observing people really, from a very, very young age. And I think sometimes when we read the works today, we miss the references and the humor, but when they're on screen, we kind of get how funny they are and we can go back and look at it. You know, it's acted out in front of us, we get the funny bits of humor. And every time I go back and reread them, I notice funnier and more clever parts to the novels. They're the gift that keeps on giving, really. But it shows that this humor was put together from a very young age. She was really good at observing people around her and character traits and things like that and piecing them together to write them down, which is such a skill.
- [08:49]
B
How did her writing style change from there?
- [08:53]
A
So I guess when she's younger, it's a lot more dramatic, more unrestrained, I think, as anybody who's ever enjoyed writing has ever done. Like, when you're younger, you want to throw everything at it. And as she gets older and she writes these novels, I mean, she edits and reframes them. I mean, early drafts of what would have been Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice were written around the time she was about 20, 21. So I'd love to know what those manuscripts would have been like, how they would have compared to later on, because the novels eventually get published when she's in her 30s, so she's lived a bit more, she's seen a lot more, and refined the stories probably a lot more. They're a lot less dramatic and swashbuckling than her younger pieces.
- [09:34]
B
So this is one of the things that Jane's often highly regarded for having, is this real keen observation of society around her. Can we really Read into that in her works, then?
- [09:45]
A
I really think so. I mean, I trained as a historian, I'm not an English literature specialist. But I love using her work to really understand what people were like back then. I mean, they're fiction, but she's writing about real people's struggles. You know, women who are at the stage in society that they couldn't get a job, but they also were poor, their estates entailed away, like a lot of financial worries, things like that. You know, there's a lot of things that get into her novels that were really real concerns for people at the time. And she's kind of putting her own little spin on them, writing about those experiences in a humorous and, like, really empathetic and interesting and funny way. So, although, of course, they're fictional, they're such a great way of looking at what people's concerns were at the time, what people found entertaining. And they're pretty timeless, actually, when you boil them down to themes like that. I mean, we still all worry about money and family and relationships and things like that, and, you know, war and peace in the world. So it's really interesting to look at them in that way and think about how these themes span across.
- [10:44]
B
How did growing up in a rural Hampshire village influence the settings and themes of her writing?
- [10:52]
A
I think the thing that she really takes from living in a community like that is it was a really strong community with lots of different families and friends that they would visit every day, they'd run between the houses. You know, their life really was centered upon this parish that her father was at the centre of. And when you think about a lot of her writing, it's really character and people driven. And there's a lot of speech, there's a lot of conversation, there's a lot gesture. There's not a lot of description of what people look like. It's all in their actions and their gestures, what they say. And I think growing up in a community like that, where people were so important, you know, family and friends, I mean, that must only have shaped that observation in storytelling, using that to drive her novel writing.
- [11:35]
B
Now, famously, the family moved to Bath. How did that impact her personally and also her writing as well?
- [11:43]
A
So the Bath years, I think, are so interesting. So she moves there. In 1801, her father, by all accounts, abruptly decided to retire and he passed on his parish to his oldest son, James, and they up and moved to Bath. And it must have been quite a time of upheaval. Now, the Austens had been to Bath before they visited There. They'd had, you know, a fun time there. I mean, bath in the 18th century was a really thriving, exciting place. It's a spa town. You know, it's a place where kind of the season's happening. It's another urban center to go, enjoy, see, see and be seen. And as you're kind of tipping into the 19th century, it's becoming almost slightly less fashionable, but there's still a lot going on there. When you read about people talking about her time in Bath, it's a really interesting period of about four or five years where it seems like she didn't really write much, but Bath appears in two of her novels. You know, it's really pivotal. You don't want to infer too much and put your own opinion on it. But she writes, heroines kind of find their peace in Bath, you know, in Persuasion. And Elliot's supposed to be kind of the spinster heroine, and she eventually is reunited with her long lost love in Bath. Now, to me, that says she enjoyed it. You know, there were things about Bath that she really loved, even though it was a difficult time. It was a time when she lost her father. Their circumstances suddenly became very, very difficult because, of course, they relied on her father's income and now they had to rely on all of her brothers. And they gradually moved around a few different addresses in Bath and went down in terms of kind of the stratification of neighbourhoods. And then eventually she left Bath and went with her brother Frank in Southampton. And it'd be a few more years until she gets that security again at Chawton in Hampshire, which is now the Jane Austen's House Museum, where she lived for the rest of her life. So it was a time of uncertainty, but also, I guess, a time of a lot of excitement and different things happening. And it must have been such a contrast to her village upbringing to live in this urban centre and that to be her home rather than somewhere she was just visiting. Get the Angel Reese Special at McDonald's. Now, let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and the drinks. Sound good?
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- [14:25]
B
It's a really interesting take in because so often you hear that Bath. She just wasn't a fan of it. Considering the tourist industry that has grown up around Bath and the celebration of her life.
- [14:35]
A
Yeah, I think sometimes you see she's Bath's most famous resident, but as I say, Bath features in her novels. It's really intriguing to me. I mean, I've recently moved to near Bath, so I thought about it a lot since being in that proximity and thinking about. Because I always thought, oh, she probably just didn't like Bath, you know, she probably didn't produce much while she was there. There's some awful things going on in her life. But at the same time, more recently, I've reread Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and I'm like, actually, there's some really interesting glimpse into Bath society that she's not writing about it with all this kind of sweetness and light, but there's this humor that she still gives to all her settings and places that she records in her novels. And I think it's somewhere I think she must have liked at points, even though it was still difficult for her. Which is why I'm so glad that she is celebrated as an important part of Bath life, because I really do think it's somewhere that really shaped her and she wouldn't have written about it so intimately if she hadn't been.
- [15:28]
B
So, as you said, her years in Bath is quite a turbulent time. How did life change after Bath?
- [15:34]
A
So very much so for Jane. She experiences that financial precarity for women that couldn't really get a proper job. The Austens sort of sit this weird kind of fringe of almost gentry society, that they're not in the gentry, but they can't really have a profession in the same way her brothers could, but she couldn't really. So her, her mother and her sister and occasionally friends as well, kind of end up moving around together and relying very much on staying with relatives. I mean, she spent a lot of time helping with her many nieces and nephews. I think she ends up having about 30 nieces and nephews. It's a lot. It is a lot. So she plays this crucial role in their lives. She's really close to them and it's because she spent this time writing to them, staying with them, and they really did have to rely on a lot of family charity to sort of make it through those years as well. I mean, Cassandra had a little bit of income because Cassandra had been engaged in the 1790s, and unfortunately her fiance passed away. And because they'd been engaged for so long, she actually had an annuity from his income. So she had a tiny bit of income, but not anything that could support mother, sisters, friends. So they really did rely on those family connections. She was close to her family, but that also must have been quite stressful to think that they were the people that she always had to rely on.
- [16:54]
B
Did life then stabilise at Chawton?
- [16:56]
A
Yes, very, very much so. I mean, so she leaves bath in about 1806. She spends a bulk of time living in Southampton with her brother Frank and his wife. And then in 1809, they're given the cottage at Chawton in perpetuity by her bro, second oldest brother, Edward. He becomes Edward Austen Knight, because he's effectively adopted by a rich, childless relation, which is surprisingly more common than you think in this period in history, because, you know, these couples that had these big estates, they wanted to be able to pass them on if they, you know, couldn't have children. And so Edward was lucky enough to be adopted in this way, and he gets a couple of estates, Chawton being one of them, and so he gives them this cottage, which we now know as Jane Austen's home. And this is very much framed as a really kind of creatively rig, fertile point in her life because she has this security. She goes back to her old manuscripts within two years of living there, Sense Of Sensibility is published. Now, this wasn't the first time she tried to get published, but this is when she's successful in doing so and she starts to see her work coming out, one every one to two years.
- [18:00]
B
Were there any challenges that Jane faced when she was publishing these?
- [18:05]
A
I think it's so fascinating and almost heartwarming for any struggling authors out there or writers, because, you know, she's one of the most revered authors in the English language and she struck to get published. It's believed that an early version of what was probably Pride and Prejudice, when it was called First Impressions, was sent by her father to a publisher in the late 1790s, and it got sent back by Return of Post, just completely rejected, which, I mean, in my opinion, one of the best books ever written. So they made a huge mistake. Although we don't know what this first draft was like, but, you know, it's Jane Austen, so it must have been pretty good. But then she also sold an early version of what would become Northanger Abbey at that point called Susan, when she was around 25, 26. And she sells this and there's a notice that goes out to say it's going to be published, but it never actually gets published. And because she sold the manuscript, she then would have to buy it back. And she spent many years trying to buy the manuscript back and it ends up her brother Henry helps her get it back. So she really didn't have an easy time of it getting published at all. And when she eventually gets Sense and Sensibility out, of course, then she's hit by the issue of whether she publishes under her name or not. So she publishes as By a Lady, which was a pretty common practice to put published anonymously back then.
- [19:17]
B
When do we actually get her works being published by Jane Austen as we know her today?
- [19:22]
A
Yeah, so not until she passes away. So her first four novels, Sense, Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, all come out as the first ones by a lady and then it will say by the author of the previous novel. So Pride and Prejudice is by the author of Sense and Sensibility and so on. And then Northanger Abbey and Persuasion come out just after she passes away a few months afterwards. And her brother Henry wrote a biographical notice of the author to go with it. So. So that's when he says that Jane Austen wrote these. She was my sister and she's now passed away. So that's when people actually really got to know her true identity. Now, there are quite a few people who did know. When you read her letters, she talks about Henry telling people that, you know, his sister wrote these novels and he's so proud of it. So people did know in kind of close circles that it was her, but obviously not publicly at all were her.
- [20:12]
B
Works well received in her lifetime.
- [20:15]
A
So, I mean, they sold reasonably well and she had some pretty high profile fans. I mean, the Prince Regent famously was a fan of her work. Supposedly he kept copies of her novels in every one of his residences and she ends up dedicating Emma, her fourth published novel, to him. I don't think she actually really liked him. In fact, I say I don't think I know she didn't actually like him because she thought that he treated his wife Caroline abominably. But she was invited to go visit his library at Carlton House in London to meet with his librarian, James Stanya Clark. And those letters are quite interesting between her and James Stanya Clarke. He tries to encourage her to write some kind of big sweeping Historical, epic and like influence what she's trying to write. And she says no, it's very interesting to read. But yeah, she had these really high profile fans. You know, some of her works ran to second and third editions during her lifetime. So she didn't make tons and tons of money, but she made like a reasonable amount of money. That must have made her really happy seen as that that she'd spent so long trying to get published that she actually had some success at it and that people really were buying and selling out of her work.
- [21:20]
B
I wonder, given that she's putting all this effort into getting her books published, all the instability that's been throughout her life, can we get close to what her life may have looked like on a more day to day basis?
- [21:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting, isn't it, to think about these people having daily lives. When you think about these huge figures in history that you really revere and are so interested in, it's so funny to think of them like day to day, what they would do, what they would eat. And I think Jane Austen's house museum do a great job of this, showing the spaces that she would have eaten in. I think they said there that she kept the key for the tea cupboard, you know, things like that, tea and the sugar and you know, that was her job, was getting that out for everybody. She write on this tiny little writing table by the window so she could see out onto the street. You know, it's so funny to think of her physical presence in a day to day way and what she would do and they'd spend their evenings reading aloud. She writes in some of her letters. When she had received her author's copy of Pride and Prejudice, she talked about her and her mother and a friend reading the first half of the first volume aloud. And you know, you just think of these things happening just in the home, you know, day to day. And it's just so fascinating to think of all that genius and also that she lived, you know, a seven day week as much as we do.
- [22:34]
B
I feel I need to ask. Jane has written some of the most iconic romances in literary history. What do we know about her own love life?
- [22:45]
A
It is the perennial question. It's hard not to ask it because I think she does such a great job in her six complete novels of playing up to all the different kind of archetypes of romance novels that we still celebrate today, that we categorize romance novels by today. You know, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, things like that. And it's so fascinating to then think of her own love life, because this kind of. Of three almost distinct suitors that we know about. The first one and the one who I think is made the most of is Tom Lefroy. So he was a relation of one of her neighbors, and he came to visit in the winter when Jane was 20 years old. And I think the reason we talk about this a lot is actually her first letter that we have mentions him, and she talks about going to a ball. She's writing to Cassandra, and she said, oh, you would really be mad at how me and my Irish friend behaved. And she talks about them being really flirtatious, then dancing too much together. But the more I read this letter, the more I think about how jokey she is about it. She makes a joke when he leaves about how she's devastated and she's crying and, you know, all these things. And I'm sure it was. She had this really fun flirtation, but we kind of make a huge thing out of it and, you know, say he's the model for Mr. Darcy and all these things. And I think we kind of cling to the fact that she wrote all these romances. And we have very few names. Names to attach it to. And the second name we have is a gentleman called Harris Big Wither. Now, he was a brother of one of their friends, and they lived at Manydown park, so that he had a big country house that he would eventually come into. And he proposed to Jane when she was 26 years old. She was nearly 27. So at that point in her life, it's horrifying to say now she would have been seen as a spinster. He proposed to her, she accepted, and then the next morning, she rejected him and abruptly left. We could spend hours trying to read into that. She clearly felt some kind of obligation towards him. The close friend's brother, he was a bit younger. He was supposed to be quite awkward and, like, sort of endearing, but, you know, not the typical romance hero. There's a lot we could read into about that, but there's kind of an Austen family lore that the big love of her life was somebody she met in Lyme Regis, but he died. Now, we don't know much about that at all, but there's these kind of three figures that kind of come in and out of her life, and there's so many theories as to why she never married, you know, that she was kind of holding out for these, like, romantic storylines that she wrote. There's theories that because she had so Many nieces and nephews, and she watched so many of her sisters in law go through giving birth that she didn't want that side of marriage because, you know, she lost sisters in law to that. It's a terrifying thing to observe. I think it's really hard not to read into it too much, but I tend to read her as somebody who really, really wanted her own independence. And she was definitely somebody who enjoyed romance. You know, you read her letters, she loved flirting with men. She jokes about it all the time. She jokes about being at the table and being kind of annoyed because all the men are married and, you know, she's at a ball, she's like dancing with these handsome men. And then there's some that she's like, oh, I tried really hard to avoid them. She's so ingrained in that world of flirtation, of romance and things like that. So it's hard not to read into whether these novels kind of parallel her own love life. But she never. She ended up having some semblance of independence and she had this kind of really female, strong community around her that really kind of sustained her happiness and kept her going throughout her life.
- [26:01]
B
Can we see Jane actually in any of her characters? If we had to cross reference, could we match her up to anybody?
- [26:08]
A
That is the million dollar question, isn't it? I mean, it's funny, I always love to think of her as like an Elizabeth Bennet sort of character. Her letters, for anyone who's not read them, are so entertaining. You know, she has so many thoughts, so many opinions, sometimes a little bit mean. But I like her all the more for it. She is somebody who can be a little outspoken, who has a witty comment about everything around her. And I kind of see her as a little bit of an Elizabeth Bennet, you know, somebody who's observing everything around her but, you know, does sometimes get things wrong, is entertained by people, has her own opinions, shall we say. But you kind of look and you think, oh, there could be aspects of her in so many of her characters, but it's so easy to say, oh, she's an Elizabeth Bennet. Cassandra potentially is a Jane Bennett. I mean, I love thinking about things like that. You can get too bogged down in it. But it is fascinating to look at these traits of things that she's written personally and see how they span across to her novels.
- [27:01]
B
Did she have a favourite work of hers?
- [27:03]
A
So I don't know if she necessarily had a favourite. She definitely talks about them in different ways. I mean, she calls Pride and Prejudice her own darling child. When she writes this letter to Cassandra saying that she's received her author's copy, she says, I've received my own darling child from London, which I think is such a wonderful phrase. But then there's other aspects of the other novels. You know, Emma, she says that she wanted to write a heroine that nobody but herself would like. So it feels like it's something really indulgent for her, like a really fun project. So there's so many aspects that we could read into about different parts in the different novels that she loved. I would be hard pressed to say which was her favorite because they're so different. And she says all these wonderful little snippets about them that none of them seem to have weight above another.
- [27:46]
B
We're coming towards the final years of Jane's life. So what do we know about this time?
- [27:51]
A
She definitely struggled with illness in the end of her life. We don't quite know what it was that she suffered from. Some suggestions have been Addison's disease, other things like that. But the last couple of years of her life, she kind of has these spells where she's kind of brought down by illness. So she picks up writing some things, puts them down, manages to finish Persuasion at Northanger Abbey. But other novels, like Sanditon, she starts in the final years of her life, but it gets put down and she just doesn't return to it because she's too unwell. And towards the end of her life, it's deemed that, you know, she can't get the treatment she needs at Chawton, Hampshire, so she goes to Winchester and she spends the last few weeks of her life at College street near Winchester Cathedral, and that's where she eventually passes away with her sister Cassandra there. So she does struggle from this ill health towards the end, that does affect her writing, but she was really surrounded by family members who were trying to make things better for her.
- [28:45]
B
Talking about these family members, how did Jane's family seek to preserve or cement her legacy?
- [28:52]
A
Cassandra famously supposedly burnt a lot of her letters. I mean, we have about. It's about 160 letters that have been left behind now. You know, back then, they wrote letters so frequently, so, so frequently. They didn't have email, didn't have text messages, couldn't call people on the phone. So that was their way of recording every single. That they did, you know, sharing opinions, sharing all sorts, the way we do today with our friends and family. So there would have been so many. So many more letters than that. And that's the Subject of Jill Hornby's book that's been adapted at the moment is why Cassandra burnt these letters. And people criminalized Cassandra for that. But actually she was protecting her sister's legacy. We wouldn't want all our messages being read by everybody, you know, no matter how great a literary genius that people might think we are, that we. She loved her sister so much. She outlives her by nearly 30 years. So she really has a long time to protect this legacy. So she burns some of the letters. Her nephew, James Edward Austin Lee, he writes a memoir about her. That memoir really shows her to be this sweet aunt who writes away in the corner. But it's more about how pious she is, how good a person she is. It's interesting because her grave in Winchester Cathedral, actually, the gravestone on the actual, actual floor of the cathedral doesn't mention her being a writer. It's the plaque nearby that mentions that she was an actual author. So it's interesting that that wasn't at the forefront of how she was remembered. But her family members are really quick to say these things about her. Henry writes his biographical notice. It's really important to him to get Northanger Abbey and Persuasion out. They all really believed in her genius and really wanted people to know who she was.
- [30:32]
B
Obviously, the picture that we have today is. Is different from that that they've presented. How has our understanding of Jane changed with subsequent scholarship?
- [30:43]
A
It's so, so interesting, actually, the study of Jane Austen. There's some really brilliant scholars who've written about this. Devony Lucer's written a brilliant book about how Jane Austen became Jane Austen, an icon rather than like a person. It's so fascinating because she kind of goes through these peaks and troughs of people's opinions. And during the war, soldiers with shell shock were given copies of her novels, amongst other the books, because they were believed to be very soothing. She's adapted during the Second World War. Laurence Olivier and Greg Arson take her on. There's this image of her as being this really comforting kind of apolitical image. But then more recent scholarship shows that actually, you know, she's writing these little snippets. You know, the Napoleonic wars are going on in the background. People are focusing on that a lot more. Mansfield park and the links to slavery. She talks about pretty much the first chapter. It's mentioned that the Bertrams have an estate in Antigua, and it shows how common this was in terms of kind of country house ownership. So now we're reading a lot more into these little references and Seeing all these other things that actually she's putting them in and people maybe haven't noticed them, and she's telling us more about her time. So the more she kind of gets adapted, the more the audience wakes up. And now we're getting adaptations of Jane Austen adaptations. I mean, you know, you watch Bridgerton, and there's moments where there's a moment where Anthony Bridgerton ends up in a lake with a wet shirt, and, you know, immediately, like, alarm bells go off, and you're like, oh, that's Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. And then you're like, well, Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. You know, it's kind of like everything's got this whole life of its own now. So it's so interesting to go back and look at changes of opinions and how she's become this kind of huge cultural icon today.
- [32:20]
B
Well, why do you personally think that she remains such a cultural icon today?
- [32:25]
A
For me, she has this resonance with her work that she wrote these novels that really people can see themselves in still. They're over 200 years old, but the concerns are still the same. It's about kind of finding relationships, finding meaningful friendship, financial insecurity, finding, like, what makes you happy in life. And I think there's something about them that still really resonates with readers today. And, you know, people find solace in the stories and, you know, they go back to them. And I do think as well, there's truth to. Because there's only six complete novels. There's all that wonder of what else she could have written. You know, you think about Leonardo da Vinci, there's a very small pool of his actual confirmed works, and it makes it more valuable. People are more fascinated by why this is. And I do think that plays into it, too, is that we have this small core group of novels, and we can play and think, what else could there have been? Which I think is so fascinating for.
- [33:19]
B
Listeners coming to Jane Austen today. What adaptations or what versions of her work would you recommend that you think.
- [33:27]
A
That'S got to be it.
- [33:28]
B
They've got to watch that one, see that one, read that one.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah. I don't want to incur anybody's wrath. I know it makes, like, a huge debate every time it's brought up whether it's 1995 versus 2005 Pride and Prejudice, but I'm always going to be a Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I mean, it's hard because the film's wonderful and there's so many great adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. I mean, Pride and Prejudice, which is a Bollywood version, is excellent. You know, I think that's such a brilliant movie. But the thing is that the 2005 film is a film, you know, you've got to get into two hours what the TV show gets into six. So I always think if you really want to kind of get to the crux of the novel, that's the one to watch. But I mean, I love the more recent Emma, that Autumn de Wilde made with Anya Taylor Joy. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. Like, the design of it was so gorgeous and it was so clever and so funny. Yeah, I thought she really captured Emma really, really well. I mean, this is. Is a subject I love. I love Jane Austen adaptations and there's so many good literary ones as well. I really love reading Jane Austen adaptations that are set in other cultures because I think it shows, again, how universal these worries are. I just think they're brilliant.
- [34:35]
B
Which adaptation of her work do you think Jane herself would most favour?
- [34:42]
A
That's such a good question. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I would love to think it is the Colin Firth and Jennifer. Pride and Prejudice, I would love to think, because, I mean, Andrew Davies did such a great job. You know, they quote from the book at points. I know they do add the little double wedding in and the kiss at the end. But I think if she was gonna be really pure about her work, that's one that she would really enjoy. But then, you know, maybe if she was around in this modern day, she would love Clueless. You know, that's a great Emma adaptation. I think it's a really, really clever adaptation and she loved things that were funny and clever. So maybe she would have liked.
- [35:18]
B
As a final question to you, are there any underappreciated or perhaps any misconceptions about Jane's personality or her life that you'd really like to highlight and throw, out, as it were?
- [35:31]
A
I think the main one, and I don't think it's as much as a misconception as it used to be, but I think the main one is that she's just writing little romances. And I'm saying that I don't think being a romance author is a bad thing. I love romances. I think romances serve such a great place in the kind of the literary canon. But I think people who see her and dismiss her dismiss not only romance as a genre, but also how clever she was in her observation of people. She's doing a great job of writing about society at the time with also some romance in it. I mean, what more could she want?
- [36:06]
B
That was Dr. Lizzie Rogers speaking to me. Emily Briffett. Lizzie is a historian specializing in women and historic houses in the 18th and early 19th centuries and their depiction in popular culture. You can catch up with Ms. Austin on BBC iPlayer.