Short History Of... - Jane Austen

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Jane Austen is arguably the most famous female writer in history. Her novels have gone on to inspire countless films, plays, and dramas all over the world, and have been translated into almost 50 different languages. But how did an 18th Century woman create stories that are still loved today? What makes her characters so timeless? And, while we know all about her heroes and heroines, what do we know about the author herself? From Noiser, This is a Short History of Jane Austen.  Written by Linda Harrison. With thanks to Janine Barchas, Professor of English Literature at the University of Texas, and author of many books about Austen, including ‘The Lost Books of Jane Austen’. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's February 1917 in northern France. In a trench on the western front of the Great War, a British soldier is propped up against a six-foot pile of sandbags, firing his rifle over the top of the enemy. The deafening roar of shelling and explosions has been relentless all afternoon, and the stench of death hangs in the cold morning air. The soldier stomps his leather boots on the frozen, muddy ground. He can't remember the last time he felt his toes. He's still haunted by the cries of his friend, who endured trench foot for weeks before going to hospital. He never came back.

Now the soldier's gun jams, and he ducks down, trying to fix it. But his mind is a mess. He can barely concentrate on what his fingers are doing. It's not just the noise, it's the terror. Only yesterday, another friend died in his arms after being hit by enemy fire. In this corner of France, you're seeing more misery than any 19-year-old should ever have to. As the shelling dies down, the officers shout to the soldiers to get some rest, so they're ready to face the enemy fire that will surely return after sunset. The young soldier turns his back on the deadly swirls of barbed wire littering no man's land

and heads through the warren of trenches to a shelter a little further back. As he walks, he thinks of his parents and sisters at home on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. His comfortable bed there. Here, rest is almost impossible. He's barely slept for more than a couple of hours at a time since joining up last year. He gets himself a tin mug of tea and finds a sandbag to sit on. Leaning his rifle close by, he pulls out a dogged pocket edition of a novel. The mud-splattered cover reads, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

The book is one of many provided by the army. As he flicks through to find his page, he sips his tea, thankful for the warmth. The war's third winter is also turning into the most bitter. The book is a welcome distraction, and he tries to lose himself in the genteel world of the Georgian middle classes. Reading Austen reminds him of his school days, but it's also a window to a time and society untouched by the horror he's surrounded by. He absently scratches at his thick, woolen underwear, itchy with lice, beneath his uniform and damp overcoat. Soon enough it will be time to pick up his rifle again, but for now he is immersed in the comforting world of the quick-witted heroine Elizabeth Bennet and the brooding hero, Mr.

Darcy. Today, Jane Austen's novels are known around the world. Academics carve out careers from debating her work, which has been translated into dozens of languages. Obsessed fans flock to see the countless adaptations of her novels. As one of the world's best-known female writers, Austen has acquired almost cult status. But what challenges did this clergyman's daughter from 18th-century rural England face in her lifetime, when vanishingly few women could call themselves writers? in her lifetime, when vanishingly few women could call themselves writers. What drives self-proclaimed Janeites today to adopt her Georgian dresses and bonnets, start societies in her honor, and devour every detail about her life?

Why do her characters and stories continue to capture our hearts and imaginations? I'm John Hopkins. From Neuser, this is A Short History of Jane Austen. On a bitterly cold night in December 1775, at the rectory in the village of Steventon in the south of England, a woman is giving birth to her seventh child. Cassandra Austin, attended to by a handful of women, gives a final push. A few moments later, the baby girl, who is almost a month late, lets out her first cry. lets out her first cry.

Propped on pillows in her four-poster bed, Cassandra cradles her healthy new daughter as the maids quietly tidy the room. One lays out thick cloths and pins to be used as nappies next to the wooden cradle, cozy with linens and blankets. Cassandra rests and feeds the round-faced baby. Jane, she decides. Her name will be Jane. The infant is christened the next day at home by her father, the Reverend George Austin. Before long, the parents send baby Jane away to be fostered by a woman in a nearby village.

This practice of handing over an infant to a wet nurse to temporarily feed and look after is a common custom, something the Austens have done with all their babies around the age of three months. Just like her siblings, Jane returns to her family at the rectory once she's able to walk. Right from the start, she's very close to her elder sister, who's named Cassandra after their mother. The pair will remain best friends and live together for the whole of Jane's life. Austen is born into a Britain on the brink of change.

While King George III, his wife, Queen Charlotte, and their fifteen children settle into life at the newly acquired Buckingham Palace, across the Atlantic the American Revolutionary War is in full swing. Explorer Captain James Cook is back on English soil after his second voyage circumnavigating the globe, and engineers are racing to develop a viable steam locomotive. But as the young Austen passes through her happy rural childhood, this burgeoning era of innovation, war and discovery has little influence on her daily life.

While her brothers have the opportunity to find careers in the church or military, from a young age Austin knows that she will be expected to marry. Despite her father tutoring students for extra income, the Austins are far from wealthy and any money they do have will pass from father to sons, leaving the daughters with little choice but to find a husband to support them financially. These social conventions of marrying for money and the related issue of the limited choices of women will later form a vivid, central theme in Austen's writing. Even so, the Austen parents value education

and encourage a love of learning and literature in all of their children. Jane's father especially is a major influence on his daughter's passion for writing and a great source of encouragement. Janine Barkas is a professor at the University of Texas and author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen. Jane Austen came from a very creative family, a family that put on private theatricals, that wrote poems, that created word games for each other to solve. She read aloud to her family, even her early works.

her family, even her early works. This was a way of sharing and a kind of word play was an Austen feature of the whole family, it seems. Everyone delighted in words. By the age of six, Austen is writing verses. She and Cassandra have a spell at boarding school, where they learn needlework, dancing, French, drawing and spelling, a curriculum designed to produce marriageable young women. Then they leave formal education to continue their learning at home. Soon Austen moves into writing stories and sketches, which are full of action, girls getting into fights and running off with each other's fiancées. In 1789, at the age of 14, she finishes Love and Friendship, a parody of the overdramatic novels popular at that time.

A voracious reader, she is nurtured by unrestricted access to her father's extensive library. And while the days of English novelists like the Bronte sisters and George Eliot are still a long way off, there are plenty of female writers for inspiration. The 18th century novel saw the rise of the woman writer. Jane Austen was born in 1775, and by the time she was born, she would have had access to shelves and shelves of female writers, especially writers of novels that were being published, sometimes anonymously. She would have had many role models as a writer. She particularly loves Frances Burney, whose work some believe will much later inspire Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice.

And reading late 18th century Gothic author Anne Radcliffe may have influenced Austen's first finished manuscript, Northanger Abbey. Maybe Austen wrote her early work for her own amusement. But it's possible she had bigger ambitions, even from her teenage years. She was a girl with an urge. Maybe she did plan from the beginning to be published. There's an argument to be made that she did because she ended up transcribing her early works, her juvenilia that she wrote as a child or a teenager,

into three volumes. But it does suggest that from the first, she was imagining or occasionally imagining herself as a published author and that her family supported her in this. In 1795, around the time Austen turns 20, she finishes her first draft of a novel entitled Eleanor and Marianne. It later becomes the much-loved Sense and Sensibility, following the lives and romances of the sensible Eleanor Dashwood and her more impulsive younger sister.

In December of that year, Austen is swept off her feet by a new admirer. Tom Lefroy is an intelligent, dashing young Irishman studying to be a barrister in London. an intelligent, dashing young Irishman studying to be a barrister in London. With fair hair and dark blue eyes, he's handsome, clever and well-read. But on the downside, he is not from a wealthy family. The two meet frequently at balls and parties while he visits his aunt and uncle, who live near to Austin. She's drawn to his good looks, quick wit and lively conversation,

and she's already old enough to feel the social pressure to marry. Maybe Lefroy is the one. The relationship is certainly important enough for her to write about to Cassandra, who is away visiting her new fiancé. Only a couple of letters from this time remain, but in one of them Austen writes to her sister, I'm almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. However, the love affair is doomed from the outset, with both families looking for a match that is financially beneficial. Soon Austen writes again to Cassandra, acknowledging that the flirtation is coming to an end. My tears flow as I write, she says, at the melancholy idea.

Whether her tone is sad or mocking is up for debate. Maybe she's fallen head over heels for Lefroy, or maybe it was only ever meant to be a brief, youthful dalliance. Whatever her true feelings, Austin's romantic fate is sealed when Lefroy's family send him away. Austin never sees him again, and he eventually marries an Irish heiress. But Lefroy remains Austin's only known love interest. As their relationship only lasted a few weeks and is relatively undocumented, it's hard to gauge how much it affected Austin's outlook on love and romance.

The flirtation with Tom LeFroy is something that's documented in her letters. That's a girl, a teenager writing to her sister about flirting. And because it is one of the few little bits of sort of lovemaking that we see her doing in her own letters, and we don't have diaries and we don't have so many of the letters, we've made a lot of it. It's lovely that we love Jane Austen so much that we want her to have had this great love affair. And we make so much of that. And other days of the week, I think it's really rather sad that we don't allow her imagination to have risen above her own circumstances, that we somehow insist that she must have been writing about a great love and that we know who

that is. We don't know. And that mystery is part of Jane Austen's great appeal, I think. And part of her genius is that we cannot pin her biography straight onto the fabric of her novels. It doesn't fit, and that's the magic. But however disappointed she is by the end of the romance, the wheels of her social calendar keep turning. It's an autumn night at the start of the 19th century. In the crowded drawing room of a handsome stone house in the English countryside, a glamorous ball is underway. start of the 19th century. In the crowded drawing room of a handsome stone house in

the English countryside, a glamorous ball is underway. Standing at the edge of the room beside her friend Fanny, Jane suppresses a sigh. The combination of perfume, the fire and the hearth, and the thick, ornate curtains is making the room stuffy. Besides, it can be dull when one is just watching the fun and not invited to dance oneself. She checks the time, then smooths the empire line gown which she embroidered herself, wondering if the effort was slightly wasted for such an uneventful evening. But then, as one dance finishes and the musicians prepare

to start the next, her friend is approached by a gentleman renowned as a terrible dancer. Fanny dutifully accepts. But as the music begins, she glances back over, begging with her eyes to be rescued. Jane covers a smile with a gloved hand, then watches as the couples skip and twirl, showing off their finest clothes,

their chaperones watching their every move. Fanny's partner, though sprightly, lives up to his reputation. Eventually, Jane too is invited to dance by Mr Merriweather, a family friend. She allows herself to be swept onto the floor and goes through the motions, the practiced footwork taking her up and down the line until she's reunited with her partner. But she can't help remembering the handsome Tom Lafroy. The music ends and Mr Merriweather brings Jane a small glass of wine. She tries to look cheerful as he witters on about the weather and the guests,

but he's tiresome company compared to Tom. Eventually Jane excuses herself and makes her way back to Fanny at the side of the dance floor. She soon spies the hostess, Lady Bridges, shepherding her youngest daughter across the room to make the acquaintance of a tall man in a particularly elegant waistcoat. The young girl simpers, fluttering her fan, and Jane raises an eyebrow knowingly at Fanny.

The lady of the house won't rest tonight until she has found a suitor for the last of her five daughters Now Jane's eye is drawn to a haughty looking woman in a frilly bonnet Animated, the woman is whispering to friends, no doubt speculating on the flirtations of the night Jane notes the woman's colour colorful style and her evident fondness for the rouge pot. Already the writer is imagining a backstory for the unknown woman, a family secret maybe. As the night draws to a close, Jane and Fanny leave the ball with the rest of the Austen party. The fresh air

is welcome after the heat of the ballroom. Arm in arm the two friends make the short walk home gossiping about the night's antics. But Jane is already thinking of what she can use of the evening in her next book. in her next book. Dances and balls feature heavily in Austen's novels, providing backdrops for key moments in her heroine's lives. A vital part of the social calendar, balls can be public or private, and are one of the few opportunities for young people to meet and flirt. But they also give Austen plenty of time for observation, a crucial part of her artistic process. Was Jane Austen a doer or a watcher? I think she was clearly both in that we have a record of, I mean, a family record or family lore

has it that she may have been quite a flirt and may have enjoyed her glasses of wine and enjoyed her dancing. And on the other hand, we also have the same kind of evidence also in the letters where Jane Austen is clearly a people watcher and enjoys observing others and enjoys writing some of those observations down in letters to her sister and to others. So the truth clearly lies somewhere in between. Now in her early twenties, Austen throws herself into her writing. Living at home with her parents and sister, she works on the Gothic satire Susan, which will later become Northanger Abbey,

often writing late into the night by candlelight. Still single, but increasingly conscious of the social pressure to marry, she explores the themes of matrimony in her writing. Around now, she writes Pride and Prejudice, the story of Mrs. Bennet, a woman determined to marry off her five daughters. While Austen doesn't shy away from giving her opinion on these social expectations, she also creates some of her most vivid characters during this time. Alongside her iconic heroines, she populates her stories with relatable people at whom she can poke fun. But it's clear that her insight into romantic relationships is a forte. Take, for example, Captain Wentworth of Persuasion. Captain Wentworth is a very striking creature. He writes what is

arguably the most compelling love letter written in literature to the heroine at the end of that story. And she, like faithful Penelope, waiting for her Ulysses to return, has been waiting for over seven years for his return. And then it comes in the form of a letter, his declaration of love that he has been planning and thinking for her all this time while she's been so patiently waiting. Austen doesn't give us many of the conversations that are successful between lovers. The ones that she gives us are the ones that are the total train wrecks that we delight in rereading.

But though some of Austen's personality comes through in her writing, readers and historians are largely left guessing about her true character. Much later, Cassandra destroys or censors many of her sister's letters.

But what remains provides our only glimpse inside her mind. In these private correspondences, packed with scathing observations on fashion and behavior, she certainly takes no prisoners. She is not a woman who I would enjoy inviting over to dinner because on the way home, in the carriage,

she would surely snub what I was wearing, what I had cooked, what I said, what I did or did not know, whether or not there were other people of information or not among the rest of the dinner party. She was super critical of the world. She seems to have been quite a free spirit and a free talker and a free writer and daring, played with fire. Even what Cassandra allowed to be left behind is, yeah, it has bite. Cassandra allowed to be left behind is, yeah, it has bite.

Jane Austen had some spice to her. Austen's writing style is also revolutionary. She pioneers the use of what's known as third-person, omniscient narration, with stories told from an all-seeing and all-knowing point of view. This allows her to access the inner thoughts of all of her fictional characters, rather than being limited to the perspective of one protagonist. Take, for example, the opening line of Pride and Prejudice. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. That's not a truth universally acknowledged, but it's universally acknowledged that way by Mrs. Bennett,

whom we meet a nanosecond later after this statement resonates with us as a reader and we realize that's her worldview and that her worldview has bled through that omniscient narration. And we almost accepted as a given fact that, okay, well, this new young man must be getting married to one of her daughters

because that is the truth universally acknowledged. That excitement, that borrowing from a character's point of view is peculiar to Austen. And she just takes it to a new level and switches between omniscient narration and he said, and she said, and this borrowing of a character's point of view so slyly and so easily that we are delighted by the effect and have been delighted for over 200 years. Austen's writing often takes a stab at the social and legal system which favors men, awarding wealth and land to the eldest male heir. It also highlights the devastating effect this can have on women, who often must marry according to their family's choices, for financial security rather than love.

Austen's heroines are usually rewarded with marriage at the end of her novels, leading us to guess that, in her mind, marriage is part of a happy ending. Whether or not Austen's own family pile on the matrimonial pressure, they're certainly also supportive of her literary talents. When she's 22, her father sends off an early draft of Pride and Prejudice to a London publisher. But in one of the biggest mistakes in publishing history, it's rejected. But in one of the biggest mistakes in publishing history, it's rejected. However, when the manuscript is sent back with, declined by return of post, scrawled on the front, Austen vows to persevere.

It's just as well, as this is only the start of her difficult journey to publication. But it's a journey she's determined to complete. She modeled her work on successful novels by others, including Frances Burney and Anne Radcliffe. And those were bestsellers both during her days. So these were women, there was nothing to sneeze at. And it's quite ambitious to kind of reference them in your work and to throw the glove on the floor, both in homage and as a challenge to those writers.

It is in the same year, 1797, that Cassandra receives devastating news. Her fiancé, working away in the West Indies, has died of fever. By the time the Austens hear of his death, it is already many months since he was buried at sea. Broken-hearted, Cassandra will never recover from her grief and never marries. By 1801 there are major changes on the horizon for the Austens. With all his sons having left home, the Reverend Austen retires and moves his daughters and wife to the fashionable spa resort of Bath in southwest England. And, though Austen is very unhappy about the move,

within a year she receives her only known proposal of marriage. Harris Big Wither is the wealthy brother of Austen's close friend, and at 21 is four years her junior. He is heir to his father's estate, but is described as being plain and awkward. He proposes while Austen is visiting Hampshire with her sister, and initially she accepts, but then she sleeps on the decision and changes her mind. After breaking off the engagement, Austen flees with Cassandra in embarrassment. Her reasons for reneging on the engagement remain a mystery. The marriage would certainly have made her a rich woman.

Perhaps there is a clue in one of her later letters, in which she advises her niece that anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection, a line that is echoed in Pride and Prejudice. Whatever her reason, it is a brave decision. Jane is already seen as a spinster and is unlikely to receive another proposal.

It must have all been very, very awkward, and we don't know why she said yes. We don't know why she said no. All we know is that we would not have these novels if Jane Austen had married and become perhaps a mother or been subject to the kind of mortality rates of women who had lots of children. Back in Bath, she finishes the book, which will later become Northanger Abbey. Then, acting as her agent, her brother Henry sells the copyright to a local bookseller, Benjamin Crosby, in 1803, for £10. Though he promises prompt, if anonymous, publication,

for some reason Crosby doesn't uphold his end of the bargain. Austen writes to him in 1809 to ask for the return of the rights, but it's not until 1816 that she's able to buy it back, through Henry, for the same amount of ten pounds. Henry for the same amount of ten pounds. Two years later, Austen's beloved father dies unexpectedly. On top of the grief, the women of the family are left in an extremely precarious financial position. Over the next four years, they slide down the ladder of gentility, renting smaller and less comfortable lodgings, largely dependent on help from loved ones. It's a deeply unhappy time for Austen, and for a while she all but stops writing. Eventually, in 1809, her brother Edward steps in and gives them a cottage on his Hampshire estate in the village of Chawton. Austen has a home once more.

Austen has a home once more. At Chawton Cottage, with its shuttered windows and pretty garden, the Austen women hire a couple of maids and a cook. Their lifestyle is modest, but comfortable and happy, and the stability gives Austen a renewed sense of purpose, freeing her to write again. She revises Sense and Sensibility, and on her behalf, Henry finds her a new publisher. It's released in 1811, but published on commission, meaning that Austen covers the costs of paper and printing, but retains the copyright. It's also published anonymously,

the title page simply stating that it is by a lady. also published anonymously, the title page simply stating that it is by a lady. The first print run sells out in two years, with a profit of £140, the equivalent today of roughly about £11,000. Momentum builds, and soon the rights to pride and prejudice are sold too. It's mid-May, 1813. In an open-top horse-drawn carriage, or barouche, Jane's heart swells as she takes in the bustling streets of London. Her mind is buzzing as the steady clop of hooves

propel her past the grand facades. She's excited to be staying with her favorite brother, Henry. But there's another reason this trip is special. Not only is she able to pay for such a fine carriage after the success of her novel and see the most fashionable art event of the year, but she's got an extra stop planned along the way. The driver pulls on the reins and the carriage stops. Jane alights onto the street. She walks past a group of well-dressed ladies in the newest fashions, the weather warm enough

now for short puffed sleeves and lace parasols. As she reaches her destination, a smile spreads across her face. She comes to a stop before a bookshop, savoring the moment before she steps inside. Because this week, her new novel has been published. She enters the shop, nodding to the assistant. Taking her time, she glances at the shelves, packed with the works of her favorite authors, the delicious smell of new books enveloping her. And then she stops. There it is, Pride and Prejudice. Hesitantly, she runs her fingers across the spines of the three-volume set,

feeling the embossed letters. She picks up the first book and carefully opens the cover. She's not named on the title page, which instead reads, by the author of Sense and Sensibility, but a tingle of excitement runs up her spine anyway. In these very pages is the story, her story, of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It was her life's ambition to be a published novelist, and though this isn't her first, seeing her own imaginings here on the printed page is still thrilling. But time is ticking on. Reluctantly, Jane replaces the book onto the shelf and heads back outside. A soft gust of wind tugs at the ribbons on her bonnet as she gets back into the carriage.

It soon pulls up on Pall Mall at the grand entrance to the British Institution Art Gallery, and she pays the driver and gets out. Under the statue of Shakespeare at its entrance, she spots Henry. Waving, she weaves through the glamorous crowd, all here to see the first retrospective exhibition by English portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds. Arm in arm, they walk into the vestibule. The exhibition opened two weeks ago, and with the Prince Regent and Lord Byron attending the first night, it's the place to see and be seen. Even so, Jane can't stop thinking about seeing her novel in the bookshop and feeling the weight of it in her hands.

She fights back tears of happiness. Here she is, a successful author mingling with London's finest. Yet just a few years ago, she felt quite hopeless, forced to live off the charity of family and friends. Rubbing shoulders with the celebrities of the time at grand events like these hold a particular usefulness for Austen, who plunders real identities and uses them for her characters. Powerful and sometimes scandalous real-world names are given to some of her best loved heroes and heroines, including Darcy, Wentworth, and Dashwood. Those Dashwoods that

are so innocent in Sense and Sensibility, The Dashwood name was notorious with bacchanalia and anti-Catholic rituals and sex scandals and royal scandals. So, yeah, Jane Austen, I believe, was daring. And that aspect of her is, I think, why we like her now. She was a very modern woman. In mid-1814, Austen's third novel, Mansfield Park, is published, again with Henry's help. Telling the story of Fanny Price, who is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, it's a great success with the public. By November, the first edition

sells out. By her late 30s, Austen's books are starting to become more fashionable. Britain is now officially in its Regency era, in which the flamboyant George, Prince of Wales, becomes Prince Regent and rules in place of his father, George III, who is deemed mentally unfit. The Prince Regent, though, is one of Austen's biggest fans and keeps a set of her novels at each of his residences. And while they're all still written anonymously, the identity of the author becomes an open secret. This prompts the prince's librarian to contact Austen, asking her to dedicate her next novel to him. And though the writer isn't exactly a fan of the ostentatious prince, she's quite aware that this isn't a request one can really turn down.

Austen's star seems to be rising with reviewers, too. For some, her writing is a refreshing change from the romantic melodrama currently in vogue. In 1816, around the age of 40, Jane completes two more novels. Emma, which follows the matchmaking misadventures of young heroine Emma Woodhouse, is packed with satirical bite. And, as requested, the novel includes a dedication to the Prince Regent. Still living at home with her mother and sister, she also finishes a draft of The Elliotts, later renamed Persuasion. But while successful, Austen is yet to see much profit from her writing. She invests in some bonds, but her family lifestyle remains relatively modest.

The following January, Austen sits down to write Sanditon, a satire about a health resort, but she will never finish it. She starts to suffer from ill health herself, including fever, rheumatic pains, fatigue, and stomach irritability. By April, she is confined to bed. Despite her illness, she continues to write. But as spring turns into summer, her condition worsens. On the 18th of July 1817, with her head cradled on a pillow on Cassandra's lap, Jane Austen dies. She is just 41 years old. Six days later, she is buried at Winchester Cathedral. Her tomb makes no mention of her writing, but several years later, her nephew James

has a brass plaque installed nearby. This memorial notes that Austen was known to many by her writings, and James pays for it out of the proceeds of the biography he himself has written about his aunt. The exact cause of Austin's death is not known. Theories range from cancer to arsenic poisoning. But the most commonly accepted diagnosis in modern times is Addison's disease, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands. Cassandra and Henry arrange the posthumous publication of both Persuasion and Northanger Abbey,

with Austen now publicly named as their author. Austen's reputation continues to grow, largely thanks to her nephew James's biography. However, she is still far from being a runaway bestseller. Jane Austen's success was delayed by almost a century. Only now, I think, can you look to Austen as a writer and as a woman and think, oh my gosh, she's almost bigger than Shakespeare. She's giving Shakespeare a run for his money. And that kind of fame took over a century to build before she was famous. So, yeah, Jane Austen was a slow burn.

Only when her work goes out of copyright does Austen really start to rise in popularity. In her lifetime, her books were extremely expensive, making them out of reach for most people. extremely expensive, making them out of reach for most people. But from around the 1840s, her novels get cheaper and are sold in railway stations and awarded as school prizes. At just pennies a copy, these reprints are some of the earliest mass market paperbacks and are instrumental in getting Austen's work before a whole new audience. Years later, Austen's novels will be prescribed to soldiers in World War I.

Their soothing effect is believed to help those suffering from depression and mental health problems arising from fighting in the trenches. Austen also gains a clutch of famous admirers. Austin also gains a clutch of famous admirers. These include World War II British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, while bedridden in 1943, is consoled by his daughter reading him Pride and Prejudice. As the age of screen adaptations dawns, new fans enjoy the countless TV dramas and films that are based on her novels. Pride and Prejudice holds a particularly special place in modern readers' hearts. In a 2003 BBC poll to find the UK's best love novel,

it comes second behind Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's made into Bollywood musical Bride and Prejudice and comedy horror film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the plot is used as a template for Bridget Jones's diary. One of its best-known adaptations sees Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy emerging from the lake in a wet shirt and causing much modern-day swooning. In this moment, a whole new generation of Janeites is created. Every day I wake up thinking, Jane Austen will have burnt out.

Surely this can't last. But she is burning as brightly now as she did right in the wake of the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice. That was such a watershed, if you'll excuse the pun, in terms of promoting jane austen anew austin mania is an international phenomenon there are jane austen societies in pakistan spain north america and australia alongside international conferences and austin related transatlantic cruises enthusiasts visit her various homes and dress up for festivals, conventions and Regency-style balls and dances.

On the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, the Royal Mail puts Austen's picture on a postage stamp. This is followed in 2017 by the Bank of England announcing Austen will be the face of the new £10 note, replacing Charles Darwin. A year later, a first edition of Pride and Prejudice sells at auction for £38,000. Jane Austen's novels shine a light on the lives of the middle classes in Georgian and Regency England. She shows how dependent women of her time were upon marriage, but her themes of why and if women should marry still ring true for many. Austen wrote about domesticity and romance, relatable characters and their weaknesses,

terrible parents and dysfunctional families. Her iconic novels have rarely been out of print since she died. And while Jane wasn't rich or famous during her lifetime, her novels, with their sharp wit and sparkling dialogue, have lived on to become timeless classics. It is remarkable how a young woman rose to become a Hollywood darling. People adore her. The manner by which she did that is due to her own merit.

She clearly hoped she'd make a career out of her writing. That was something that is only happening now. And boy, is it happening. And so hopefully Austen is smiling down upon herself and her accomplishments. Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of Magna Carta. Everyone's heard of Magna Carta. Very few people have read it. Even fewer people understand it.

I'm fascinated by the story of the making of Magna Carta. The Plantagenets are the most interesting dynasty, in my opinion, that ever ruled England. And their psychodrama, which ended up producing all sorts of famous episodes, but in this case, a very famous document in Magna Carta, is a family story that has huge political consequences. And it's a story that I believe everyone should know and would enjoy. That's next time.