You're Dead to Me - Jane Austen (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in Regency England by historian Dr Lucy Worsley and actor Sally Phillips to learn all about the life and works of literary legend Jane Austen on the 250th anniversary of her birth in December 1775.It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of England’s best-loved authors, and the creator of such indelible characters as Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy, Emma Woodhouse and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Whether you have read one of her six books – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park – or seen one of the many adaptations, most of us have some experience with Austen. But her life story and how it influenced her writing is perhaps less well-known. This episode explores her early life as the daughter of a rural clergyman, takes a peek inside the books a teenage Jane was reading, and delves into her romantic and familial relationships to see what shaped Austen into the formidable literary talent she was. And it asks a key question: was Jane Austen, who wrote such wonderful women characters, a feminist?This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Clara Chamberlain and Charlotte Emily Edgeshaw Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are donning our bonnets, seeking an eligible bachelor, and promenading back to George and England to learn all about literary icon Jane for her 250th anniversary year. Happy birthday, Jane! And to help us explore her life with pride but no prejudice, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a historian, curator, author and broadcaster. She's the host of the fantastic BBC Sounds historical true crime podcasts, Lady Killers, and Lady Swindlers.

She's the presenter of many wonderful BBC TV documentaries. She's the author of many best-selling books, including, Lucky for Us, Jane Austen at Home. And you'll remember her from our episode about another literary giant Agatha Christie. It's Dr Lucy Worsley. Welcome, Lucy. Hello, thank you for having me. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning actor, writer, sketch comedian and presenter. You will know her from all of the things, including The Beloved, Smack the Pony, Miranda, Green Wing,

Taskmaster. I'm Alan Partridge, Veep, and of course the Bridget Jones movie franchise, which is basically Pride and Prejudice. And you'll definitely remember her from our episode about fairy tales. It's only Sally Phillips. Welcome back to the show, Sally. Hello, Greg. Thank you for having me back. Delighted to have you back. Sally, it's lovely

to have you back in. It's lovely to be here. I mean, you're in a BBC sitcom called Austin. Different spelling. It's a lovely show, but it is not an adaptation. No. But you were in Pride and Prejudice, sort of, because Bridgett's diary, is Pride and Prejudice? Yeah, Bridgette Jones' diary is basically Pride.

The first novel is exactly the plot. I think Helen just took the plot of Pride and Prejudice and took her characters from the newspaper columns and put them into that structure. But that's what you always get told to do by movie executives. So they say there are books written about it. Really? All rom-coms have to be Pride and Prejudice.

And consequently, I have developed a slight fear and phobia of Jane Austen. Oh, no. So, I mean, she is, when I read the books, I do absolutely love them. And she's also the sort of grandmother of a particular strain of female comedy that you sort of trace the line from her through E.M. Dellafield, Helen Fielding, and then even onto Fleaberg, I think, this kind of ironic female protagonist. And you also, of course, were in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I was, and that was fascinating.

So I was Mrs. Bennett in Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. Yeah, it was interesting to play Mrs Bennett in that context because if there's a zombie apocalypse, you genuinely do want to keep your daughters safe in quite an expensive stately home with high walls. It's a lovely film. It's not necessarily a family-friendly film. I think it's the best Austin adaptation has ever been, Greg.

So, What Do You Know? This is The So What Do You Know, where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subject. and no guessing needed, it's Jane Austen. You know who she is. All six of her classic novels have been adapted for the screen multiple times. Maybe you swooned over a wet Colin Firth in BBC's Pride and Prejudice. Or you sighed over Kira Knightley and the famous Matthew McFadden handflex.

Perhaps you melted over Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet in sense and sensibility, or rooted for Anya Taylor Joy in Emma, or Dakota Johnson in persuasion. Or did you giggle, and my personal fave, love and friendship with the brilliantly funny Kate Beckinsale. And of course, Jane Austen's life has also been dramatised in films like becoming Jane and the recent BBC TV series Miss Austin. But was Austin's life anything like her novels and how soon is too soon to break off in engagement? Let's find out.

Sally, I'll start with you, see what the levels are. What sort of family... Hello, Greg. What sort of family and class position do you think baby Jane was born into? I know her parents ran a school for boys. So she was surrounded with boys. So what does that make them?

Well, teachers or like Parson kind of level. Okay, so sort of middle class. I don't know what that is. Is that middle class? Yeah, middle class. It's not aristocrats anyway. Not aristocrats, okay. But they had some wealthy relations.

I think that's a pretty good summary. Lucy, was Jane Austintaciously wealthy at birth? Well, she belonged to this level in society that's called the pseudo gentry. I love this term. It means that you want to belong to the landed gentry, but you don't actually have any land. So there's quite a lot of make-do and mend and keeping up appearances at this level in society. And like desperate longing for servants?

Yes. Carriages. Sort of high-scent bouquet, is it? It's very... Yes, there's a bit of that going on. Right. And her dad was a rector, as you say. So he had money from a parish,

but it was a rural parish, which didn't give him enough money to live in the style of a gentleman, which is what he wanted. So he had side hustles. He ran a school from the house. Okay. This is George, is it?

George, Mr George Austin. And they also ran a farm. Let's talk about the siblings, because you said lots of boys running around. The boys are brothers. Jane has many siblings. She's got six brothers. Imagine that.

And a sister. And it seems like part of the reason that she became a writer was to make jokes to entertain them all. There are lots of children to be occupied in this life. So the mother was Cassandra. Jane's sister is called Cassandra, named after the mother, is that right? Yes. Yes. And the father George had a bit of reputation, Sally.

He was known as the handsome Proctor. Oh. So Proctor. Sounds like he's like... It was from when he was studying at college. A proctor is a sort of university position. And he had, he was famous for his lovely hair. And when he got older, he had this lovely head of white, silky hair. Leonine. He's Michael Heseltine, basically. Lucy, tell us more about the childhood of Jane. It's a sort of agricultural childhood. We imagine her with quill in hand, but actually she's growing up on a farm. She's more likely shovel in hand, sort of scooping up manure and, you know. She had to do actual work.

We know that she had to help out in the dairy when they were short-handed. She knows quite a lot about cooking and that sort of thing. Yes, it's not all balls and tea parties. What else do we imagine in terms of her education, Sally? I have no idea whether girls went to school. I imagine you had governesses. Did she have her own governess or did she have no education? It's interesting this whole question.

Her dad was quite progressive, and he would let Jane and her sister read all of the books in the house, which included all sorts of trash. But he didn't let them study Latin and Greek with the male pupils for the very good reason that that would prevent them from ever getting married, because once you could speak Latin and Greek, you were unmarangible. But sometimes the girls were sent away for short periods at boarding school. This was never a great success. They had to lead the school because they wanted enough money to pay the bill.

and the schools that they went to were quite informal and they did have lessons in girlish things like history and needlework and drawing and music and dancing and they also would read trashy magazines together it's been suggested that Jane got her sort of interest in writing not from the serious tomes by Fielding and Richardson and so on in her father's library but perhaps just as much by reading the trashy magazines

that the girls shared in the dormitory at the Abbey School So 1790s 1780 she's in boarding school, and what is a trashy magazine then? Ghost stories, romances, pirates, that sort of thing. The sort of thing that Jane's own novels would be the complete antidote to in due course. So Jane started writing when she was 12. Sally, when did you find out you were funny? I think people were laughing at me.

About that age, I started writing stupid poems and things to make. So 11 or 12, that sort of age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I suppose I started writing little plays for the family. This is exactly the same. This is it? Yeah, I'm identical to Jane Austen.

You aren't the Jane Austen of your era. I wish. I wish, I wish. But yes, I started doing that plays for the parents and friends, getting my brothers to dress up as things, dressing up in mother's old clothes and putting football socks on our hands and pretending to be cats and doing Aladdin. I mean, that's almost exactly the Jane Austen story. Is it?

Yeah. They put on plays in the book. So tell us more about some of these spoofs then. Are they, is it in jokes or is it sort of broader genre parody? The thing that I find so attractive about her juvenilia, her early short stories, is just how badly people behave in them. There's quite a lot of violence and people going mad and running amok. My favourite of the Austin films is love and friendship.

And she wrote that at 15. Yes, it's not like one of the standard six novels. But it's an early... It's a novella, isn't it? It's very short. Yeah. When do we get our first, one of the classic six novels that people have probably read? Well, while she was still living at Steventon, so by the time she was 25, she'd already drafted the first three, the ones that would end up as Sense and Sensibility,

Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. But they were described in her lifetime as gradual productions, because they were produced so gradually. there would be many, many drafts and refinements. Oh, really? It's extraordinary to think that the bones of pride and prejudice were down there on the page when she was about 21. The one that would become known as sense and sensibility,

you can see what a journey it went on, because it was originally written in the form of letters between Eleanor and Marianne. It was an epistolary novel. Was that quite common at the time? It was. It was a well-known format, but, well, it limits you, doesn't it? It limits what can happen, really,

if you've got to write to somebody else to describe it. Yes. Let's turn on to Pride and Prejudice because that's her most beloved novel. It's a truth universally acknowledged. Can we talk about Pride and Prejudice, how Jane created it? And how did she feel about it? Was she proud of it? Was it her favourite book?

Was it her favourite book? I'm not sure that we know that. Okay. But it's... She loved Lizzie, didn't she? Yes. She was very proud of her Lizzie, calling her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.

But in the world at the Georgians, Lizzie was actually a bit in your face. Well, she seems recognisably modern in some of her attitudes, but it was quite shocking at the time. This was definitely a sort of a bold move to make such a sparkling, feisty heroine. And there's also some very snobby people in it, like Mr Darcy and Lady Catherine de Burr.

And I think part of the background of this is that one of Jane's brothers had been adopted by richer relatives, and he'd actually gone into the proper landed gentry. And when Jane went to visit him in his new home, in his new luxury lifestyle, she felt a bit like an outsider. Oh, really? And being an outsider is definitely part of Lizzie Bennet's sort of core, isn't it? Pride and Prejudice was offered to a publisher, not by Jane, but by her father.

I thought it's her brother. Her brother does a different book, a brother. Her father, he's sort of the proxy here. So Jane wasn't even allowed to go to the publishing meeting and say, I've written this book. It's the dad. We don't even know if Jane knew that he'd sent it off to a publisher. Yeah, we don't know that for a fact. But he got a pretty sharp refusal. No thanks.

Oh, God. Imagine being that guy. He turned down Pride and Prejudice. So Austin's third novel was written in her early 20s. That is Northanger Abbey, which has got a fantastic got a got a gothic title. North Ang, it's sort of, you know, you can feel the moon is dark and the clouds are coming in and the owl is hooting. It's not her best known novel, but it was her first success in terms of publishing. It's her technical debut in terms of how the publishing world saw her. It was her first novel that was successful in that a publisher actually bought it for £10.10 pounds. What is that in today's money?

10 pounds, no. It was not a lot. The only money that she had at that time was £20 a year pocket money that her dad gave her. And if she had been a governess, she'd have earned £35 a year. Right. So not a King's ransom. So it's sort of three months' salary, maybe. It's a bit of money.

Yeah, and it's the first money she'd ever earned. Sure. But this is 1798-99 that she wrote it. But it doesn't come out then. For ages, for ages. Northanger Abbey was written in 1798-99, but it wasn't published until after her death in 1817, in a double volume with persuasion.

In her life, her brothers, her father are doing the negotiations for her. Why is this, Lucy? I mean, women have been writing novels for decades by this point. Yes, but it's a dirty business. It's a dirty business to be a lady, to be a, literally, to be a lady novelist. And it is possible there are role models like Francis Bernie. Yeah. But often they had to present themselves as doing it because their husband had died

or because their children were starving. You needed a really strong motive to do it. To do it as a member of the pseudo-gentry was just completely socially inappropriate. So that's why she used pseudonyms to correspond with her publishers. But she never published as Jane Austen. When she was alive, her name wasn't on the cover of her books. By a lady. A lady.

By a lady. Jane Austen, by this point, had written a few things. The thing that's a constant with Jane Austen always ends with a happy ending. Does that mean she was drawing on happiness in her own life? Or is that simply the form that you had to do as a novelist? You've got to define happiness. All right. Because, you know.

Marriage, marriage at the end. Exactly. In the stories the marriage plot unfolds, there's always a happy ending in that she gets together with the hero and lives a comfortable life. There's also an element of happiness and completion in the fact that the heroine gets somewhere to live. Because nearly all of them have some kind of problem with their home. They've been chucked out of it. They've got no money. They've got no financial security. And it's just not clear whether Jane herself was, as generation, have believed her to be, disappointed in love. I mean, because she was a spinster, and because she died a spinster, people have thought,

oh, well, she must have been, you know, kind of sad and dried up and lonely and screwed up, but she actually made decisions actively not to marry. All right, so she didn't marry, but she did nearly marry, Sally. Do you know this story? No. All right, there was an engagement, Lucy, the gentleman in question, 1802, in sweeps, They're wonderfully named. Mr. Harris Bigwither.

I know it's not funny to laugh at people's names, but that is a bit of a funny name. It's quite funny. That's hilarious. Harris Bigwither. Mr. Harris, Bigwither, that was never going to work. No, could you imagine the wedding night disappointment of Mr. Bigwither? And the front cover of Pride and Prejudice, you know, written by Jane Bigwither.

It just doesn't work, does it? Come on. So tell me about Mr. Harris, Bigwither. Well, I mean, what is there to say, Lucy? It's a brief fling, let's put it that way. In fact, do you want to... Is he in Bath? Is she in Bath by 1802? Not quite yet in Bath, I don't think.

She was visiting his sisters, who were good friends of her. Okay. And he proposed, and she said yes. And he came with a mansion and a fortune. They lived in this lovely house called Many Down Park. His family did. And she said yes, until the next morning when she broke it off. Oh.

She just couldn't go through with it. He was six years younger than her. He was quite physically... unimpressive and of course he had a silly name. I mean, come on. And did she acknowledge to Cassandra that she just couldn't be called Mrs. Biggley? No. How did she talk about it?

It was a big, it was a big drama. It was a big drama because the stakes were so high. Because as well as Jane getting a home for the rest of her life and the fortune. Everybody would get her sister. Cassandra could come and stay. Exactly. And she was really good friends with his sisters. There was so much going for it.

Except for the man himself. So what did she say about it? it. She didn't say anything. No, no. She just broke it off. She just, the 24-hour cooling off period, she just went, yep, no, sorry, sorry. No. Just can't do it. Just can't do it. But I think there's not an accident in the timing of this, because the night she breaks

off the engagement, just before that, she'd made her first book deal. Northanger Abbey. So do you think she had the hope if I can, I will be able to support myself. I'm not going to need to be Mrs. Bigwither. I do think that. There's no actual linked evidence for it, but it seems to me. psychologically sound that she thought maybe I can make my living in another way. So it's a hinge moment and she never speaks of it again. How very discreet of her.

Yes, she's a classy lady. Let's talk about her 20s, her late 20s, her early 30s. The family does move to Bath in 1801. Bath has been dining out on that ever since. But is it or is it not true that she hated Bath? There's quite a lot of evidence that you can build up to suggest that no, she had a terrible time now. Really? Okay. Yeah.

There's another school of thought which is that she doesn't. The evidence is kind of hints and allusions. And is that sponsored by Bath Tourism? In 1801, her father decides to move the family to Bath, basically because he knows he needs to get husbands for his daughters. There's nothing for them to live on after he's died. And that's the marriage market. That's the marriage market.

And Jane is not really into this husband hunting thing and is no good at it. And then when he dies, the family begin, say this is Jane, her sister and her mom. They start a new life as poor relations. They've got no money. They have to live on handouts from Jane's brothers. One of the brothers says, I've got a plan. I've just got married. I'm a naval captain.

I'm going to be away at sea. I'll rent a house for my mother, my sisters and my wife in Southampton. It turns out that Frank's new wife didn't want to live with her mother-in-law. And this sort of fell apart as a plan and they couldn't afford the rent. And then Jane's other brother, Edward, the one who got adopted by the rich people, he comes up with a better plan because he owns a house back in Hampshire. And he lets his mother and sisters live there without any rent for the rest of the...

And this is Chorten. The rest of their lives. So we do finally get sort of literary success for Jane. In 1811, Sense and Sensibility was published as the A-Lady. A-Lady publishes it. It sells well. She retains the copyright. That's good because she get royalties.

Then 1813 Pride and Prejudice. She sells the copyright. Yes. Really silly move. Terrible error. So it was the publisher John Murray who got all of the cash from what turned out to be a big. a smash hit. So she just got paid once and that's it.

No royalties ever. So one of the biggest novels of all time. Yeah. Ah, that's annoying. And then nothing published under her name until after her death. Emma was published before. Oh, was Emma published? Okay.

And so was Man'sfield Park. Oh, no, not under her name. No, no, right. So always a lady. Yeah. Book writing, Sally. Book writing. She's committed to her art.

Do you know the next novel? So we've had Pride and Prejudice Sensibility, Northanger Abbey. Is the next one persuasion? No, it's Mansfield Park, 1814. Again, about a poor relation, Fannie Price, who goes to live with a wealthier family. It feels familiar, Lucy. I think people are really interested in this one now

because of the possible critique of transatlantic slavery that's kind of hidden within it. The Bertram family have made their money in the new world. Yes, they have a plantation. Yeah, it's very distasteful. And the head of the family goes off and he visits this plantation and then he comes back again

and it's only poor little Fanny who's shy as anything who dares to ask him what's going on over there and there's this idea that Mansfield Park this big grand house is in fact corrupt

the people there are not good people and like you were saying it's Fanny who's the most humble character who actually has the sort of moral purity and self-worth to clean the whole stable out really and make everybody behave better

Yeah. So we have Emma then published in 1815. That's your favourite novel of the sixth Lucy. We need to talk about persuasion and obviously Sanderton, because sadly, Jane became very ill in 1815, 16, and she was writing persuasion, and she'd never finish Sanderton, Lucy. This is heartbreaking because it was Jane really loved going on holiday to the seaside. This was considered to be a place of health and happiness for her and for all Georgians. and Sanderton is a seaside romance and she wrote it when she was really ill and in bed and in the little fragment that survives it's written in her sort of pencil and you can tell that she's ill

but she's clearly imagining a world where she's healthy and happy and by the sea she's never going to get there. That's very sad. I mean she died and the 18th of July 1817. She was only 41 and she left everything to Cassandra. Yes, she did. Her sister. Persuasion was published posthumously then

1817 to straight. Just after her death, the book comes out. Yes, her family just flogged everything. They said, okay, right, let's move on, sell the copyrights. We'll take the 500 pounds. And then Henry got the copyright back for Northanger Abbey. Yeah, and published it. Okay. So it's an extraordinary life, Sally. It's tragic in some ways. It is sad, isn't it? It is sad. But what amazing books. One could view Austin's stories as sort of genteel bonnet fests. But she's living through an era of tremendous historical turmoil.

You've got the French Revolution, the anti-Catholic Gordon riots, the Napoleonic Wars, the Abolition of Slavery Act. We have the changing rising of the classes, the Industrial Revolution. We have huge turbulence. Britain nearly goes into sort of revolution a couple of times. But critics have accused her of writing small books in a big time. Lucy, fair? Well, I don't think it is.

This is a traditional criticism. And you can read them as sort of defences of the existing order because things get resolved at the end and there's a lot of concern about who's going to act properly and look after the countryside and the community. But if you look for the details of the great changes of her time, they're there. They're just done in a feminine, domestic way.

One example I like is that in Pride and Prejudice, the silly girls, Kitty and Lydia, they go into the town and they come home and they say, oh, we had a great day. We went to a hat shop and we saw a soldier being flogged and then we had tea. And they come home and they say this, really shocking thing

they saw someone being flogged in the street of their local town and a soldier but because they're silly girls it's used to express their character they're too silly to see what's happening so that's how the Napoleonic War is present in Jane Austen

in a subtle feminine way I find it fascinating Lucy was telling me just before we started recording that Winston Churchill said Jane Austen's books got him through the Second World War I mean there's a deep comfort and optimism isn't there

yeah The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Sally and I sit quietly and sip tea in the drawing room for two minutes while Lucy sits at the pianoforte to serenade us with something we need to know about Jane Austen. My stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes, Lucy.

Take it away. A lot of people have got the idea that Jane Austen was some kind of little old lady living in a cottage in the countryside, producing masterpieces kind of by accident and this is what her family want us to think because it was socially inappropriate for her to be this kind of ambitious, professionally successful female writer and when she was writing, she didn't have a proper study

she'd write on this wobbly little table in the corner of the drawing room which had a squeaky door and she would never get this fixed because when the door squeaked she would know to hide away her paper and to get on with whatever it was that her family wanted her to do. So here kind of in secret she was producing her late great books, Emma and Mansfield Park and Persuasion. And to me, these are books with a really serious message, which is that it is so rubbish that women are expected to marry for money. So kind of in secret, she was in fact writing the books that would blow the locks off the doors

that were keeping women like her trapped in this subordinate position in society and in their families. And that is why I think she's not just an important writer, but also because of the risks she took to become a writer, an important human being.

I must say, this is my interpretation. And the great thing about Jane Austen is that she's such a rich artist. You can see what you want to see. You can make the case that she's a brilliant comedian. You can make the case that she's defending the social order and she's all about doing the conventional right thing

or you can make the case like I do that she wouldn't have recognised herself as such but that she was a feminist. I loved reading that she, a letter she wrote to her sister where she talks about going around the galleries in London looking for portraits of the characters and pride and prejudice. that to me is just so, because that's sort of what I do preparing a part.

I collect a load of, like a collector life and an image and, you know, smells and all of that. But the idea that these characters live on, they live on for us, but they live on for her too. And she's telling Cassandra, I haven't been able to find a portrait of Lizzie. And I'm sure that's because Mr. Darcy is so proud of her. He wouldn't want her portrait up in public. but I found Jane, the very image of Jane, wearing a yellow dress, which confirms to me that yellow was Jane's favourite colour. It's just fascinating to me that when you do something good,

these characters do live on, and they do live on with you, you know. And I love that they lived on with her. Listeners, if you want more of Sally, check out our episode on Fairy Tales. It was an absolute treat. For more literary geniuses with Dr. Lucy, seek out our episode on Agatha Christie, another formidable, brilliant writer. and if you long for Regency Romance, come dating with us on our episode about Georgian courtship with lovely Carriehead Lloyd.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds in the UK to hear a new episode 28 days earlier than any other podcast app. I'd just like to say a huge thank you. To our guests in History Corner, we have the wonderful Dr Lucy Worsley. Thank you so much, Lucy. A pleasure, thank you. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Sally Phillips.

Thank you, Sally. Thank you very much for having me. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we dust off another favourite from the Library of History. But for now, I'm off to rummage in the loft through my old teenage comedy sketches in the hope that they're as funny as love and friendship. But let's be honest, they won't be.

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