0:00:02 > 0:00:03BIRDSONG
0:00:12 > 0:00:15This is the world of a Jane Austen novel.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18An elegant Georgian drawing room.
0:00:18 > 0:00:23I could just imagine Emma Woodhouse taking tea,
0:00:23 > 0:00:25Anne Elliot reading poetry,
0:00:25 > 0:00:27or even Mr Darcy,
0:00:27 > 0:00:30warming his britches before the fire.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34It seems a safe, domesticated landscape,
0:00:34 > 0:00:37and it's the setting for her stories of the courtships
0:00:37 > 0:00:42of intelligent, polite and privileged young ladies.
0:00:42 > 0:00:45But why on earth are millions of us
0:00:45 > 0:00:49still reading these period romances?
0:00:49 > 0:00:52How has this genteel fiction,
0:00:52 > 0:00:56become a 21st century, global phenomenon?
0:00:57 > 0:00:59Over the last 200 years,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02Austen's books have travelled a long way.
0:01:02 > 0:01:04From the libraries of aristocrats,
0:01:04 > 0:01:07to cheap railway bookstalls.
0:01:07 > 0:01:09She produced fiction which had a sort of,
0:01:09 > 0:01:12a self possession and a technical audacity,
0:01:12 > 0:01:14unparalleled anywhere else in Europe.
0:01:14 > 0:01:16She was adored by soldiers
0:01:16 > 0:01:20and she found stardom on stage and on screen.
0:01:20 > 0:01:21It's a hit Broadway comedy.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24What's more, in every era, her readers
0:01:24 > 0:01:26have found something personal,
0:01:26 > 0:01:29important and new in her words.
0:01:29 > 0:01:33No one has known how to make love read so importantly as she does.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38As a historian and an unashamed fan,
0:01:38 > 0:01:41I'm fascinated by the story
0:01:41 > 0:01:45of how an anonymous, minor novelist in her own lifetime,
0:01:45 > 0:01:47became celebrated today
0:01:47 > 0:01:50as our very best-loved writer.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03This is Fort Worth, Texas.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07And if you wanted to know just how successful Jane Austen is today,
0:02:07 > 0:02:10hold your horses and look no further,
0:02:10 > 0:02:11because this weekend,
0:02:11 > 0:02:13the stetsons have been outnumbered
0:02:13 > 0:02:16by the bonnets,
0:02:16 > 0:02:19as Fort Worth plays host to the Jane Austen Society
0:02:19 > 0:02:22of North America's annual convention.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25The biggest international celebration,
0:02:25 > 0:02:29for an author whose fame ranks second only to Shakespeare.
0:02:32 > 0:02:35This gloriously eccentric hotel convention,
0:02:35 > 0:02:39demonstrates the rampant commercialisation
0:02:39 > 0:02:41of the world Jane Austen made.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47There's an extraordinary array of merchandise,
0:02:47 > 0:02:50spin offs from the Austen brand.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52Jane And The Damned.
0:02:52 > 0:02:54Austen as chick lit.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58Clueless - Emma updated to an American high school.
0:02:58 > 0:03:02And here we have Bollywood, Bride And Prejudice.
0:03:02 > 0:03:04It's an astounding phenomenon.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09But underneath all the dressing up and role play
0:03:09 > 0:03:12the spin-offs and the merchandise,
0:03:12 > 0:03:16there are plenty of committed Austen readers.
0:03:16 > 0:03:18I like the way she characterises people
0:03:18 > 0:03:22and the people that she writes about you can still see today.
0:03:22 > 0:03:24I think anyone who's ever been in love,
0:03:24 > 0:03:26will find an equal in one of her novels.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30She has a wonderful ironic tone
0:03:30 > 0:03:32that makes me think,
0:03:32 > 0:03:35and gives me a sense of history
0:03:35 > 0:03:36and romance,
0:03:36 > 0:03:38and great literature!
0:03:40 > 0:03:43Here in Texas,
0:03:43 > 0:03:44Jane Austen, the commercial brand,
0:03:44 > 0:03:48dances hand in hand with an appreciation
0:03:48 > 0:03:50of Jane Austen, the serious novelist.
0:03:50 > 0:03:52And it's this partnership,
0:03:52 > 0:03:54that gives Austen a unique position
0:03:54 > 0:03:56in the world of literature.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05At Sotheby's in London, the international sale rooms,
0:04:05 > 0:04:07brand Austen is the big attraction
0:04:07 > 0:04:09at today's auction.
0:04:09 > 0:04:11220...
0:04:11 > 0:04:12240...
0:04:13 > 0:04:15260 I have...
0:04:15 > 0:04:17This is the sale of a rare Jane Austen fragment.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19In her short life,
0:04:19 > 0:04:21Austen only produced six complete novels
0:04:21 > 0:04:24and every surviving scrap of her writing
0:04:24 > 0:04:27is of immense interest,
0:04:27 > 0:04:30especially if the manuscript is in her own hand.
0:04:32 > 0:04:34Here are 60 precious pages
0:04:34 > 0:04:35of an uncompleted novel,
0:04:35 > 0:04:38written while she was living in Bath.
0:04:38 > 0:04:40This is a section...
0:04:40 > 0:04:42'Earlier on, I was lucky enough to be given a peak
0:04:42 > 0:04:45'at the manuscript, before it went under the hammer.'
0:04:45 > 0:04:48I've never seen a Jane Austen manuscript before.
0:04:48 > 0:04:50Yeah it's a...
0:04:50 > 0:04:53it is a wonderful thing, so exciting to actually see...
0:04:53 > 0:04:55see her handwriting and, of course, not just...
0:04:55 > 0:04:58just her handwriting, it's not... It's not just a letter,
0:04:58 > 0:05:00it's actually a literary manuscript
0:05:00 > 0:05:03and not just a literary manuscript, but a working manuscript
0:05:03 > 0:05:05as you can see, you know,
0:05:05 > 0:05:07careful corrections.
0:05:07 > 0:05:10This is the only manuscript draft, isn't it, of her unfinished novel?
0:05:10 > 0:05:12- Yeah, that's right.- The Watsons.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15It's a very tantalising fragment, isn't it?
0:05:15 > 0:05:16Yes.
0:05:16 > 0:05:18"Your lordship thinks
0:05:18 > 0:05:20"we always have our own way."
0:05:20 > 0:05:22Yeah.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24"That is a point on which ladies and gentlemen
0:05:24 > 0:05:26"long disagreed,
0:05:26 > 0:05:30"but without pretending to decide it,
0:05:30 > 0:05:33"I may say that there are some circumstances
0:05:33 > 0:05:36"which even women cannot control.
0:05:36 > 0:05:37"Female economy
0:05:37 > 0:05:40"will do a great deal, my lords,
0:05:40 > 0:05:44"but it cannot turn a small income into a large one."
0:05:44 > 0:05:46Absolutely!
0:05:46 > 0:05:47Yeah!
0:05:47 > 0:05:50I think what's really most important about this piece of work
0:05:50 > 0:05:54is its content and that seems to me, quite explosive,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57there's a real angry voice in this,
0:05:57 > 0:05:59which is overlaid with more elegance, I think,
0:05:59 > 0:06:01in the other novels.
0:06:01 > 0:06:03Who do you think are going to be the big bidders?
0:06:03 > 0:06:05I mean, obviously, I can't....
0:06:05 > 0:06:07Are you at liberty...?
0:06:07 > 0:06:09What sort of figure do you expect?
0:06:09 > 0:06:13The estimate is £200-to-300,000.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16At 650 in the room.
0:06:16 > 0:06:18680, thank you.
0:06:18 > 0:06:20700,000, thank you.
0:06:23 > 0:06:27It's beginning to look as if Gabriel was being ever-so-slightly cautious!
0:06:27 > 0:06:29720, thank you...
0:06:29 > 0:06:31750, thank you.
0:06:35 > 0:06:37There are two very committed bidders
0:06:37 > 0:06:41and we've now reached nearly three times the estimate.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Yeah, 800,000, thank you.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46Last chance then, at 800,000... 820, I have now.
0:06:46 > 0:06:49850...
0:06:53 > 0:06:56No? It's in the room.
0:06:56 > 0:06:58On the arm. Anybody else?
0:06:58 > 0:07:01At 850...
0:07:01 > 0:07:03last chance, against you all.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07No regrets? At 850...
0:07:07 > 0:07:09Yours sir. Thank you.
0:07:09 > 0:07:11APPLAUSE
0:07:13 > 0:07:17The Watsons has just sold for a stunning £850,000,
0:07:17 > 0:07:21so that's three times the estimate.
0:07:21 > 0:07:23I think that's an amazing achievement,
0:07:23 > 0:07:26for a woman who struggled in genteel poverty.
0:07:26 > 0:07:27At her death,
0:07:27 > 0:07:31her manuscripts were burnt or scattered or just given away.
0:07:31 > 0:07:32And now she's provoked,
0:07:32 > 0:07:35just for a little fragment of a novel,
0:07:35 > 0:07:36a global bidding war.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41And the buyer who saved the manuscript for the nation,
0:07:41 > 0:07:45was none other than the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47It's a huge price to pay
0:07:47 > 0:07:51and clear proof that Austen's academic status today,
0:07:51 > 0:07:55is just as potent as her commercial brand.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58So how did Austen become our national treasure?
0:07:58 > 0:08:00To find the answer,
0:08:00 > 0:08:03you have to look at the history of how she was read.
0:08:03 > 0:08:06Who was reading her, and why?
0:08:06 > 0:08:09The very first people to read Jane Austen
0:08:09 > 0:08:11were her family.
0:08:11 > 0:08:14We know that Jane Austen was clever and precocious,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17she was writing by the age of 12.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20But then she was born into a big, bookish family.
0:08:20 > 0:08:24All her brothers and her beloved sister Cassandra,
0:08:24 > 0:08:27all of them loved reading, re-reading,
0:08:27 > 0:08:28reading aloud,
0:08:28 > 0:08:31writing, drawing and amateur theatricals.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34Come on!
0:08:34 > 0:08:38'The Austens adored putting on plays for family and friends.'
0:08:38 > 0:08:40- Let's turn back quickly.- Very well,
0:08:40 > 0:08:44but hasn't this walk been invigorating? Oh!
0:08:44 > 0:08:45Oh, Marianne.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49'And even today, the locals still relish a bit of alfresco theatre.'
0:08:49 > 0:08:51I think I've twisted my ankle.
0:08:51 > 0:08:53Allow me to offer my services, madam.
0:08:53 > 0:08:55'The teenage Jane was theatrical,
0:08:55 > 0:08:57'irreverent and prolific,
0:08:57 > 0:09:00'dashing off romantic parodies and satires
0:09:00 > 0:09:02'for the entertainment of her clever siblings
0:09:02 > 0:09:04'and bookish relatives.'
0:09:08 > 0:09:09By her early 20s,
0:09:09 > 0:09:12Jane Austen had completed drafts of two novels,
0:09:12 > 0:09:16First Impressions and Elinor And Marianne.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19But it would be another 14 years
0:09:19 > 0:09:21and numerous disappointments,
0:09:21 > 0:09:23before she was finally published.
0:09:25 > 0:09:29Elinor And Marianne became Sense And Sensibility,
0:09:29 > 0:09:32and first went on sale 200 years ago
0:09:32 > 0:09:35in October 1811.
0:09:35 > 0:09:39Oh sir, however may I thank you? May I ask to whom I am so obliged?
0:09:39 > 0:09:41"His name, he replied, was..."
0:09:41 > 0:09:45Willoughby, madam, currently of Allenham.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49"His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness,
0:09:49 > 0:09:52"were instantly the theme of general admiration.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55"And the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne,
0:09:55 > 0:09:59"received particular spirit from his exterior attractions."
0:09:59 > 0:10:02"Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the rest,
0:10:02 > 0:10:06"for the confusion which crimsoned over her face,
0:10:06 > 0:10:09"on his lifting her up, had robbed her
0:10:09 > 0:10:11"of the power of regarding him
0:10:11 > 0:10:13after their entering the house."
0:10:14 > 0:10:17But the people who first enjoyed these words,
0:10:17 > 0:10:20had no idea who was writing them.
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Why do you think Jane Austen published anonymously?
0:10:23 > 0:10:26People say it's because she was modest and unassuming...
0:10:26 > 0:10:27No!
0:10:27 > 0:10:29..which is baloney actually,
0:10:29 > 0:10:33because Sir Walter Scott, who was the bestselling novelist of the age,
0:10:33 > 0:10:35also published anonymously.
0:10:35 > 0:10:37So it's polite convention only, then?
0:10:37 > 0:10:38Yeah, it's a polite convention,
0:10:38 > 0:10:41which enabled her to have quite a lot of fun, actually,
0:10:41 > 0:10:43because, of course, people guessed a lot.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47A lady in the village in Chawton, a Mrs Ben,
0:10:47 > 0:10:52came round and Pride And Prejudice had just been delivered
0:10:52 > 0:10:55and Jane Austen and her mum took turns reading out
0:10:55 > 0:10:57about half of the novel over several hours,
0:10:57 > 0:11:01and Mrs Ben was delighted and said how brilliant the author must be.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03Jane Austen didn't tell her.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06I think she quite liked those sorts of games.
0:11:06 > 0:11:08But calling it "By A Lady",
0:11:08 > 0:11:10it's not utterly anonymous,
0:11:10 > 0:11:12so she makes it clear that it's a female author.
0:11:12 > 0:11:15Do you think that affects the way
0:11:15 > 0:11:18readers would have viewed the novel at the time?
0:11:18 > 0:11:21Do you think women more likely to buy a novel by a lady?
0:11:21 > 0:11:24I think saying, "By A Lady" on the title page,
0:11:24 > 0:11:26did affect people's expectations.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30I think they would have known that it was an advertisement
0:11:30 > 0:11:33for the kind of product they were getting.
0:11:33 > 0:11:35They weren't going to get
0:11:35 > 0:11:39roistering scenes of, sort of, sexual impropriety.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42So would they expect, what, a comedy of manners
0:11:42 > 0:11:43or romantic comedy, in modern terms?
0:11:43 > 0:11:46I think when you see "By A Lady" on the cover,
0:11:46 > 0:11:49what you expect is really a tale of courtship.
0:11:49 > 0:11:51You expect a story
0:11:51 > 0:11:53about a young woman who is not married
0:11:53 > 0:11:55at the beginning of the novel
0:11:55 > 0:11:57and is married at the end.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01Let me be open now.
0:12:03 > 0:12:05Every day,
0:12:05 > 0:12:07since I first saw you,
0:12:07 > 0:12:09my love for you has grown.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14Elinor, I know I have no right to hope,
0:12:14 > 0:12:17but I must ask.
0:12:19 > 0:12:21Can you forgive me?
0:12:23 > 0:12:24Can you love me?
0:12:31 > 0:12:33Will you marry me?
0:12:43 > 0:12:49Austen anatomised the social and psychological drama of courtship,
0:12:49 > 0:12:52the perils and the pleasures.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57So who read that first edition of Sense and Sensibility?
0:12:57 > 0:13:01Although 750 copies were sold in the next couple of years,
0:13:01 > 0:13:05there aren't many clues about who actually bought it.
0:13:05 > 0:13:07But luckily,
0:13:07 > 0:13:10there are letters from one woman, Countess Bessborough,
0:13:10 > 0:13:12that prove Sense And Sensibility,
0:13:12 > 0:13:15was read with pleasure in this house.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24Althorp is the breathtaking Northamptonshire home
0:13:24 > 0:13:26of the Spencer family.
0:13:29 > 0:13:31I went to meet Earl Spencer,
0:13:31 > 0:13:34to talk to him about his regency relative, Lady Bessborough,
0:13:34 > 0:13:36who wrote to a friend,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39"Have you read Sense And Sensibility?
0:13:39 > 0:13:43"It is a clever novel. They were full of it at Althorp."
0:13:43 > 0:13:46Lady Bessborough's the lady in the middle of the portrait there,
0:13:46 > 0:13:49and one of the three Spencers of that generation,
0:13:49 > 0:13:51the most famous one on the left,
0:13:51 > 0:13:53her sister Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
0:13:53 > 0:13:57And Harriet was very much her handmaiden and companion
0:13:57 > 0:14:00and we know she was great fun, very, very amiable,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02lovely, bright, sparkly person Harriet
0:14:02 > 0:14:04and intensely loyal.
0:14:04 > 0:14:06I imagine this kind of group
0:14:06 > 0:14:10of toffs, sitting around reading, perhaps reading aloud.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13Have you any sense of how reading was done in a room like this?
0:14:13 > 0:14:17I have. I mean, I know from diary entries from my family at the time
0:14:17 > 0:14:20that reading was taken incredibly seriously.
0:14:20 > 0:14:21Lady Bessborough and her family,
0:14:21 > 0:14:24when they lived here, when they came here,
0:14:24 > 0:14:27it was a buzzing, fizzing place, of new ideas.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30You know, this was not some stuffy, aristocratic outpost,
0:14:30 > 0:14:32this was a salon,
0:14:32 > 0:14:35with a crackling atmosphere of intellect and discovery.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40Lady Bessborough notoriously had a long affair with a much younger man,
0:14:40 > 0:14:43who then married her niece.
0:14:43 > 0:14:46You know, this is quite racy behaviour.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50So I wonder how they regard the proprieties, really,
0:14:50 > 0:14:52of a novel like Sense And Sensibility?
0:14:52 > 0:14:54Well, Lady Bessborough did have a racy love life.
0:14:54 > 0:14:57But I think I think that,
0:14:57 > 0:15:01you know, you can have a, you can have an unconventional love life
0:15:01 > 0:15:05and still appreciate the more formal settings of Jane Austen's novels,
0:15:05 > 0:15:08and the part of romance,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11and marriage and social advancement in them.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14There must be a strong possibility that the women in the family
0:15:14 > 0:15:18sympathised with Marianne, because though they're aristocratic women,
0:15:18 > 0:15:21they still have very constrained choices.
0:15:21 > 0:15:24So I think they could really engage with a novel
0:15:24 > 0:15:27which is about limited options.
0:15:27 > 0:15:32I think the fact that Lady Bessborough and her sister were aristocrats
0:15:32 > 0:15:36is sort of less important than their gender.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39Lady Bessborough and her sister were both paired off
0:15:39 > 0:15:43with incredibly eligible men who they didn't like or love,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45so the whole business of marriage
0:15:45 > 0:15:49and of allying marriage with social class,
0:15:49 > 0:15:52they would have understood that very, very keenly.
0:15:55 > 0:15:57In the time of Jane Austen,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00courtship was the defining test in the life of a young woman.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04But she was supposed to be passive and self-controlled,
0:16:04 > 0:16:08so how could she find out whether a man was worthy?
0:16:08 > 0:16:14Austen nails the desperate torment of that struggle with masterful understatement.
0:16:15 > 0:16:16Marianne, only half dressed,
0:16:16 > 0:16:19was kneeling against one of the window seats
0:16:19 > 0:16:22for the sake of all the little light she could command from it,
0:16:22 > 0:16:27and writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her.
0:16:27 > 0:16:28In this situation Elinor,
0:16:28 > 0:16:34roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first perceived her
0:16:34 > 0:16:37and after observing her for a few moments with silent anxiety,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40said in a tone of the most considerate gentleness,
0:16:40 > 0:16:42"Marianne, may I ask?"
0:16:42 > 0:16:48"No, Elinor, she replied. "Ask nothing. You will soon know all."
0:16:48 > 0:16:51The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said
0:16:51 > 0:16:53lasted no longer than while she spoke
0:16:53 > 0:16:57and was immediately followed by a return of the same excessive affliction.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00It was some minutes before she could go on with her letter
0:17:00 > 0:17:05and the frequent bursts of grief which still obliged her at intervals
0:17:05 > 0:17:09to withhold her pen were proofs enough of her feeling how more than probable it was
0:17:09 > 0:17:13that she was writing for the last time to Willoughby.
0:17:16 > 0:17:20The story of Marianne and Elinor and their broken hearts
0:17:20 > 0:17:24was appreciated by an audience well beyond the libraries of the aristocracy.
0:17:26 > 0:17:27Books were expensive,
0:17:27 > 0:17:30but thanks to the popular circulating libraries,
0:17:30 > 0:17:35Austen's novels also made their way into the hands of a wider public.
0:17:35 > 0:17:37So how successful was she?
0:17:37 > 0:17:41I would say that by the standards of Jane Austen's day,
0:17:41 > 0:17:46in her own lifetime, in that very short period of six years
0:17:46 > 0:17:49between her first published novel and her death,
0:17:49 > 0:17:53- she's really very successful. - Oh, you think?- Oh, absolutely.
0:17:53 > 0:17:57She publishes her first novel, Sense And Sensibility, at her own expense
0:17:57 > 0:18:01and that means she gets the profits from it.
0:18:01 > 0:18:06She earns £250 from Sense And Sensibility.
0:18:06 > 0:18:12I mean, you don't actually even have to compare it to other writers' earnings.
0:18:12 > 0:18:18This is at the time where perhaps the income for a professional gentleman who's doing quite well
0:18:18 > 0:18:22might be £500 a year. So that's a really substantial sum of money.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27Her literary career taking off,
0:18:27 > 0:18:31Austen published three more novels in quick succession.
0:18:31 > 0:18:36Pride And Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814
0:18:36 > 0:18:39and Emma in 1815.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42But before she could see her last two manuscripts in print,
0:18:42 > 0:18:46Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, her health began to fail.
0:18:48 > 0:18:54In 1817, Jane died in her sister's arms at the age of only 41.
0:18:59 > 0:19:04She was buried here in the splendour of Winchester Cathedral.
0:19:04 > 0:19:09But don't get the wrong idea. This was no grand farewell.
0:19:09 > 0:19:11Whatever success Austen had enjoyed
0:19:11 > 0:19:15was certainly not translated into public recognition.
0:19:16 > 0:19:21Her early morning funeral was discrete and sparsely attended.
0:19:24 > 0:19:25This is her grave.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30I mustn't stand on it. She's actually buried beneath here.
0:19:30 > 0:19:34"In memory of Jane Austen.
0:19:35 > 0:19:40"Younger daughter of the late George Austen of Steventon."
0:19:41 > 0:19:44What's she remembered for? She's remembered as a daughter,
0:19:44 > 0:19:46as a true Christian,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49for the benevolence of her heart.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54The sweetness of her temper
0:19:54 > 0:19:59and the extraordinary endowments of her mind.
0:19:59 > 0:20:03But that's it. Nothing of her great novels.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08So it seems at the very moment of her death,
0:20:08 > 0:20:14her great achievement and her fragile prestige as a writer
0:20:14 > 0:20:16is going to perish with her.
0:20:19 > 0:20:21Within three years of her death,
0:20:21 > 0:20:25Austen had fallen out of fashion and out of print.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29Unsold copies of her stories of polite rural society
0:20:29 > 0:20:33were sold off by the publishers at knock-down prices.
0:20:40 > 0:20:42So what on earth happened?
0:20:42 > 0:20:46Well, the main culprit was Romanticism.
0:20:46 > 0:20:50Literary fashion was turning against the drawing room.
0:20:50 > 0:20:55By the 1840s it was dramatic landscapes and wide horizons,
0:20:55 > 0:21:00fiery desire and rebellion, that set the pulses racing.
0:21:01 > 0:21:07And no woman captured humid passion on the page quite like Charlotte Bronte.
0:21:08 > 0:21:15As a northern school girl there was absolutely no escaping the Brontes.
0:21:15 > 0:21:18We were forever here in Haworth Parsonage on the coach.
0:21:18 > 0:21:20It was always raining.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24But somehow this kind of gloomy, poky parsonage
0:21:24 > 0:21:27and the idea of the three sisters writing and dying
0:21:27 > 0:21:31seemed designed to appeal to the teenage imagination.
0:21:31 > 0:21:37Bronte is as deeply associated with Yorkshire and gloom, rain and moors
0:21:37 > 0:21:41as Jane Austen is with Hampshire and sunshine.
0:21:43 > 0:21:46And Charlotte was certainly no Jane Austen fan.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50She complained in letters to her friends:
0:21:50 > 0:21:53'The passions are perfectly unknown to her.'
0:21:54 > 0:21:58'I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen
0:21:58 > 0:22:01'in their elegant but confined houses.'
0:22:03 > 0:22:05Lucasta Miller is a Bronte expert
0:22:05 > 0:22:10and I wondered if she could explain Charlotte's attitude to Austen.
0:22:10 > 0:22:14I think it suggests that Austen just wasn't hugely popular
0:22:14 > 0:22:17in the 1820s and '30s when Charlotte Bronte was,
0:22:17 > 0:22:20as it were, doing her apprenticeship as a writer.
0:22:20 > 0:22:24I mean, she was a hugely voracious reader but what she was reading
0:22:24 > 0:22:29was stuff that was completely opposed to the Austen sensibility.
0:22:29 > 0:22:35Is it just that the Brontes found Austen too sensible and suitable?
0:22:35 > 0:22:38Yeah, but it's much more than that.
0:22:38 > 0:22:43I think Bronte thought that Austen was in denial about human psychology.
0:22:43 > 0:22:46I mean, Bronte... You know, the sex instinct and the death instinct
0:22:46 > 0:22:49are the things that you get in the Bronte novels.
0:22:49 > 0:22:53They're sort of, you know, pulling them right up to the surface
0:22:53 > 0:23:00and Bronte thought that Austen was shallow, prim, superficial,
0:23:00 > 0:23:04sort of averting her eyes from the truth about human nature.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07I would say that's a really unfair caricature of Austen
0:23:07 > 0:23:10because there's just as much pain and suffering,
0:23:10 > 0:23:15disinheritance, poverty, outsiders and depression there
0:23:15 > 0:23:17as there is in any Bronte novel.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21But clearly there's something lacking as far as romantic readers are concerned.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23So what is it?
0:23:23 > 0:23:30Yeah, I think it's the individualism of Jane Eyre or indeed Wuthering Heights.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33The idea of the romantic outsider, the romantic rebel.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37Well, Austen's heroines may not have been rebels,
0:23:37 > 0:23:42but they still endured heartbreak and desire.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48And where Bronte loves hysteria, Austen prefers smiling irony.
0:23:51 > 0:23:52"Dear Miss Morland,
0:23:52 > 0:23:57"consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained.
0:23:57 > 0:23:59"What have you been judging from?
0:23:59 > 0:24:02"Remember the country and the age in which we live,
0:24:02 > 0:24:06"remember that we are English, that we are Christians."
0:24:06 > 0:24:1230 years earlier, Austen mocked overheated gothic fiction in her novel Northanger Abbey.
0:24:12 > 0:24:18You can feel her smirking when her hero chides the heroine for entertaining cliched fantasies
0:24:18 > 0:24:22about spooky houses, locked rooms and dirty deeds.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26"Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable,
0:24:26 > 0:24:29"your own observation of what is passing around you.
0:24:29 > 0:24:34"Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been entertaining?"
0:24:35 > 0:24:37In the decades after her death,
0:24:37 > 0:24:41Austen was a background figure in the literary landscape,
0:24:41 > 0:24:43outshone by the unbridled Brontes,
0:24:43 > 0:24:47the medieval romances of Sir Walter Scott,
0:24:47 > 0:24:52as well as the social panoramas of Thackeray, Gaskell and Dickens.
0:24:52 > 0:24:58But by the middle of the 19th century, Austen was back in print
0:24:58 > 0:25:01thanks to a new Victorian invention.
0:25:01 > 0:25:03The advent of rail travel re-engineered
0:25:03 > 0:25:07the shape of the nation and the speed of life.
0:25:08 > 0:25:15Quite unexpectedly, it also created a captive new audience for books.
0:25:15 > 0:25:16In 1848,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19William Henry Smith and Sons,
0:25:19 > 0:25:20WH Smiths,
0:25:20 > 0:25:24opened their very first railway bookshop here at Euston.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28So if you were off on your travels you could nip into the bookshop
0:25:28 > 0:25:31and pick up a copy from their railway library.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35These very cheap and often garish editions
0:25:35 > 0:25:37were known as yellowbacks.
0:25:37 > 0:25:38The inclusion of Austen
0:25:38 > 0:25:42among the early yellowbacks on the shelves of Smiths
0:25:42 > 0:25:44was largely due to the fact
0:25:44 > 0:25:47her titles had recently fallen out of copyright.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52Nevertheless, it was these low-priced popular editions
0:25:52 > 0:25:57which introduced Austen for the first time to a mass audience.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02"It is a truth universally acknowledged
0:26:02 > 0:26:06"that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
0:26:06 > 0:26:09"However little known of the feelings or views of such a man,
0:26:09 > 0:26:13"may be on his first entering a neighbourhood..."
0:26:13 > 0:26:17"This truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families..."
0:26:17 > 0:26:20"That he is considered as the rightful property
0:26:20 > 0:26:23"of some one or other of their daughters."
0:26:25 > 0:26:29But the real turning point in Austen's relationship
0:26:29 > 0:26:31with her Victorian readers came in 1870,
0:26:31 > 0:26:35when Jane's nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh,
0:26:35 > 0:26:40took it upon himself to present an authorised account of her life.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44I went to meet Professor Kathryn Sutherland
0:26:44 > 0:26:46at the modest Hampshire cottage
0:26:46 > 0:26:49where Austen lived with her mother and sister.
0:26:49 > 0:26:51So who is the Jane Austen, then,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54that emerges from this first biography?
0:26:54 > 0:26:58Well, a surprisingly intimate picture of Jane Austen emerges.
0:26:58 > 0:27:00How she parcelled out her time,
0:27:00 > 0:27:05how she was the one in the family who prepared breakfast at 9.00 am.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07She was also responsible for
0:27:07 > 0:27:12keeping an eye on the quantities of tea that they had, and topping it up.
0:27:12 > 0:27:14How she wrote in this room,
0:27:14 > 0:27:16sitting at her desk over there
0:27:16 > 0:27:19and how, and this is where of course
0:27:19 > 0:27:22mythology perhaps begins to enter the story,
0:27:22 > 0:27:28how she was alerted to any unwelcome intruder on her writing activities
0:27:28 > 0:27:31by the creaking of this door as it opened
0:27:31 > 0:27:33so she could hide away her manuscripts.
0:27:33 > 0:27:38I have to say that is one of the most annoying anecdotes
0:27:38 > 0:27:41in the whole of the history of literary women,
0:27:41 > 0:27:44this idea of, "Ooh, the creaking door,"
0:27:44 > 0:27:49and then, "Oh, I'll hide away cos I'm a modest little woman!"
0:27:49 > 0:27:52She's described really in a way that fits, I think,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Victorian ideals of femininity,
0:27:55 > 0:27:57- like some sort of little wren or sparrow.- Yes.
0:27:57 > 0:28:02You know, and not seeking the glare of publicity
0:28:02 > 0:28:05and...I don't know, it doesn't fit, really,
0:28:05 > 0:28:09with all the sense of the intellectual brio
0:28:09 > 0:28:12- you find in the novels. - No, I think it doesn't fit at all.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16But undoubtedly, it does give us a myth
0:28:16 > 0:28:21and a myth that remained powerful for an extremely long time.
0:28:29 > 0:28:31So, presumably there's not very much
0:28:31 > 0:28:35about the secret private life of the bedroom in the Austen-Leigh biography.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39No, I think we'd be hard pushed to find secret life of the bedroom
0:28:39 > 0:28:41in any of Jane Austen's biographies.
0:28:41 > 0:28:43That's a challenge for the biographer, isn't it?
0:28:43 > 0:28:47But actually, as the way this room is now presented,
0:28:47 > 0:28:50as part of the museum, of the shrine to Jane,
0:28:50 > 0:28:53there are elements of the Austen-Leigh myth in here.
0:28:53 > 0:28:55For instance, he had,
0:28:55 > 0:28:58he had the dilemma of a portrait.
0:28:58 > 0:29:01People wanted to see what Jane Austen looked like.
0:29:01 > 0:29:07All he had to work with was this cartoon drawing by Cassandra,
0:29:07 > 0:29:09sometime 1810-11.
0:29:09 > 0:29:11Rather sardonic image.
0:29:11 > 0:29:15- Yes, quite a mean little face, really.- A mean little face indeed.
0:29:15 > 0:29:17Pursed little lips?
0:29:17 > 0:29:19And the family argued over what they should do,
0:29:19 > 0:29:22and they decided they would give it a makeover.
0:29:22 > 0:29:27So a portrait was commissioned from that to soften its features.
0:29:27 > 0:29:30Interestingly, there was quite a debate in the family
0:29:30 > 0:29:32as to whether it looked like Jane.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35And they all agreed it had a kind of look of her,
0:29:35 > 0:29:38but they wouldn't really recognise her from it.
0:29:38 > 0:29:40But on the other hand, it was a pleasant face.
0:29:40 > 0:29:43Pleasant, but much less intelligent-looking.
0:29:43 > 0:29:46- Less intelligent, more homely... - Bit dopey.- Yes!
0:29:46 > 0:29:49- More confined within a domestic image.- Yes.
0:29:49 > 0:29:54And this became the frontispiece of the first edition of the biography.
0:29:54 > 0:29:57- So this is dear Saint Jane of Chawton.- Exactly.
0:29:57 > 0:29:59This is the Jane Austen of myth.
0:30:02 > 0:30:04PARLOUR MUSIC
0:30:04 > 0:30:07As the end of the century approached
0:30:07 > 0:30:12an ardent army of Jane Austen fans were swelling in numbers.
0:30:12 > 0:30:14Make haste!
0:30:14 > 0:30:15Then and now,
0:30:15 > 0:30:19the spiritual home for these enthusiasts was and remains
0:30:19 > 0:30:22the Georgian resort city of Bath.
0:30:24 > 0:30:28Today, the highlight of Bath's annual Jane Austen Festival
0:30:28 > 0:30:32is a dashing Regency parade,
0:30:32 > 0:30:36a carnival of muslins and millinery, bonnets and breeches.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39And it's not just the ladies who have a weakness for buckskin.
0:30:40 > 0:30:41Are you the haberdasher?
0:30:41 > 0:30:45Well, I, madam, am the haberdasher's assistant.
0:30:45 > 0:30:48Tis my wife's business, madam.
0:30:48 > 0:30:50So you sell all this stuff.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53How do you account for everybody wanting to dress up so much?
0:30:53 > 0:30:54Well...
0:30:54 > 0:30:58I mean, that is a short, short question and a big answer.
0:30:58 > 0:31:01If you accept that the 60 years of George III's reign
0:31:01 > 0:31:05were probably the greatest epoch in British history
0:31:05 > 0:31:08and the Regency is the cream on the top of the cake,
0:31:08 > 0:31:10and so it attracts so many people.
0:31:12 > 0:31:15Did you make your own costumes or buy them?
0:31:15 > 0:31:18This is my own. And this is a naval surgeon 1806.
0:31:18 > 0:31:19- Oh, is it?!- Oh yes, yeah.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22Do you think that's what a lot of the appeal is?
0:31:22 > 0:31:25Actually seeing the clothes, the costumes, the carriages,
0:31:25 > 0:31:27- the chandeliers.- Oh yes, yeah.
0:31:27 > 0:31:29It's that age of elegance that's gone, I think.
0:31:29 > 0:31:32And a lot of people look for it.
0:31:32 > 0:31:36A lot of people wish they were back to that standard of elegance.
0:31:38 > 0:31:41100 years ago
0:31:41 > 0:31:44there was a rather more serious male interest in her books.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48A sophisticated and high-brow clique of academics and aesthetes
0:31:48 > 0:31:51who called themselves the Janeites.
0:31:51 > 0:31:53GEORGIAN DANCING MUSIC
0:31:54 > 0:31:57For Janeites like Sir George Saintsbury,
0:31:57 > 0:32:00the proper appreciation of Austen's literature
0:32:00 > 0:32:04was an exclusive and reverential pursuit.
0:32:04 > 0:32:05With Miss Austen,
0:32:05 > 0:32:10the myriad trivial unforced strokes build up the picture like magic.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14Nothing is false, nothing is superfluous.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18Katie Halsey is the author of a new book on Jane Austen's readers
0:32:18 > 0:32:20and I met up with her in Bath
0:32:20 > 0:32:23to find out who these Janeites actually were.
0:32:25 > 0:32:29They're a sort of cosy elite of Oxford dons, the literati,
0:32:29 > 0:32:31who are all really interested in Jane Austen.
0:32:31 > 0:32:34They do seem quite precious to me.
0:32:34 > 0:32:36The Janeites say things like,
0:32:36 > 0:32:40"I'd like to marry Elizabeth Bennett and spend my life with her."
0:32:40 > 0:32:42It's quite an odd thing to say about a heroine.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44Yeah, it is, but then that whole thing
0:32:44 > 0:32:47about wanting to be a part of Jane Austen's life
0:32:47 > 0:32:50is very much part of what the Janeites are all about too.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53They're interested in falling in love with her characters,
0:32:53 > 0:32:58knowing more about them, being part of a world Jane Austen has created.
0:32:58 > 0:33:00So what was it that the Janeites found in the books?
0:33:00 > 0:33:03Is it the characters, the style,
0:33:03 > 0:33:06the laughter? Is it the wit? Is it the architecture?
0:33:06 > 0:33:09I think it's probably all of those things and more.
0:33:09 > 0:33:11I think one of the things they did find was
0:33:11 > 0:33:13an idea of an England that had gone,
0:33:13 > 0:33:16a secure world, a world that has rules,
0:33:16 > 0:33:19however much those rules may be subverted and undercut in the novels.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22I think people saw that stability in her.
0:33:24 > 0:33:25I think it's good to know
0:33:25 > 0:33:29there are all these male supporters of Jane Austen throughout history
0:33:29 > 0:33:31because somehow the fact she is now seen
0:33:31 > 0:33:34as a kind of female author with a female readership
0:33:34 > 0:33:36has somehow undermined her status.
0:33:36 > 0:33:38Yes, I think it's important for people to know
0:33:38 > 0:33:42Winston Churchill, for example, read Jane Austen in the middle of the war
0:33:42 > 0:33:43and said she cured him.
0:33:43 > 0:33:48"Antibiotics and Jane Austen made me better from a fever," he says.
0:33:48 > 0:33:50DRUM BEATS
0:33:52 > 0:33:56Another loyal Janeite was the writer Rudyard Kipling.
0:33:56 > 0:33:57During the First World War,
0:33:57 > 0:34:01the Kiplings lost their only son in battle.
0:34:01 > 0:34:03Rudyard assuaged their grief
0:34:03 > 0:34:07reading Austen aloud to his wife and daughter.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11He even went on to write a short story called The Janeites
0:34:11 > 0:34:14set in the battlefields of the Western Front.
0:34:18 > 0:34:21This is the Menin Gate in Ypres,
0:34:21 > 0:34:24the town the Tommies called "Wipers."
0:34:24 > 0:34:28Thousands upon thousands of soldiers from across the British Empire
0:34:28 > 0:34:32marched out into the trenches through this gate.
0:34:32 > 0:34:36In an act of commemoration, a ceremony of remembrance
0:34:36 > 0:34:41takes place here every single day of the year.
0:34:41 > 0:34:45BUGLES PLAY "THE LAST POST"
0:34:52 > 0:34:56Trench warfare was a soul-destroying mix
0:34:56 > 0:34:58of intermittent terror
0:34:58 > 0:35:00and numbing monotony.
0:35:00 > 0:35:02SOUNDS OF CANNONS
0:35:04 > 0:35:08The December 1915 edition of The War Illustrated
0:35:08 > 0:35:12reported, "We were caught unprepared by the clamour for books
0:35:12 > 0:35:17"that rose from the trenches almost as soon as they were dug.
0:35:17 > 0:35:19"No matter what officer or man
0:35:19 > 0:35:22"was asked if there was anything he wanted,
0:35:22 > 0:35:24"the answer was always the same,
0:35:24 > 0:35:27"cigarettes and something to read."
0:35:30 > 0:35:35But what sort of books did the soldiers demand?
0:35:35 > 0:35:38"What he does not want is fiction about war.
0:35:39 > 0:35:43"He likes tales of strong domestic interest
0:35:43 > 0:35:46"and it is worth noting that Jane Austen
0:35:46 > 0:35:51"has taken her fragrant way into a surprising number of dug-outs."
0:35:53 > 0:35:57Among papers donated to the Imperial War Museum,
0:35:57 > 0:36:01there is a private memoir by an officer, a teacher from Glasgow
0:36:01 > 0:36:04by the name of William Boyd Henderson.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10Often and often during a long route march or a cold dirty job,
0:36:10 > 0:36:14a lorry or caterpillar, I've been kept in my spirits
0:36:14 > 0:36:17by the thought of the book in my kit bag waiting for me.
0:36:17 > 0:36:21With what eagerness I have opened it and been transported immediately
0:36:21 > 0:36:26from the world of sergeant majors, bayonet fighting and trench digging
0:36:26 > 0:36:29and lorry cleaning and caterpillar greasing
0:36:29 > 0:36:33to a new world created for me by my adored Jane Austen.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38"I see myself lying full-length on the grass
0:36:38 > 0:36:42"as I finish a chapter of Emma."
0:36:43 > 0:36:46"Till now that she was threatened with its loss,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49"Emma had never known how much of her happiness
0:36:49 > 0:36:52"depended on being first with Mr Knightley,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55"first in interest and affection.
0:36:55 > 0:36:58"Satisfied that it was so and feeling it her due,
0:36:58 > 0:37:00"she had enjoyed it without reflection,
0:37:00 > 0:37:03"and only in the dread of being supplanted
0:37:03 > 0:37:08"found how inexpressibly important it had been."
0:37:09 > 0:37:13Face to face with industrialised military slaughter,
0:37:13 > 0:37:16soldiers could look away into Austen's world
0:37:16 > 0:37:18and be consoled.
0:37:18 > 0:37:22In 1917, an intelligence officer, Reginald Farrer,
0:37:22 > 0:37:27managed to find time to mark the centenary of Jane Austen's death
0:37:27 > 0:37:31with a critical essay which redefined her achievement.
0:37:31 > 0:37:35Farrer wrote, "Talk of her limitations is vain.
0:37:35 > 0:37:37"It must never be thought
0:37:37 > 0:37:41"that limitation of scene implies limitation of human emotion."
0:37:43 > 0:37:47"Jane Austen's heroes and heroines and subject matter are, in fact,
0:37:47 > 0:37:49"universal human nature."
0:37:50 > 0:37:56He kills off stone dead the idea of twee, spinsterish Jane,
0:37:56 > 0:38:01and says really, she lives only in the novels
0:38:01 > 0:38:05where she's a genius on a par with Shakespeare,
0:38:05 > 0:38:09important forever for the brilliance of her realism.
0:38:09 > 0:38:12So at last, 100 years after her death,
0:38:12 > 0:38:17she's finally made it as the...as a national author.
0:38:20 > 0:38:24After the unimaginable barbarity of world war,
0:38:24 > 0:38:26the civilising power of culture
0:38:26 > 0:38:29seemed essential for the future of mankind.
0:38:29 > 0:38:31And in the universities,
0:38:31 > 0:38:36the study of the humanities, especially English literature,
0:38:36 > 0:38:38expanded rapidly.
0:38:38 > 0:38:43This newly popular discipline demanded a scientific rigour
0:38:43 > 0:38:45be brought to the gentle art of reading books.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50In 1948, a controversial Cambridge don
0:38:50 > 0:38:54wrote a book that transformed Jane Austen's ranking
0:38:54 > 0:38:56in the literary league tables.
0:38:56 > 0:39:02FR Leavis was one of the most opinionated and influential critics of modern times
0:39:02 > 0:39:04and he was based here, at Downing College.
0:39:06 > 0:39:10Leavis formed the taste of generations of graduates,
0:39:10 > 0:39:13from the 1930s right through to the 1960s.
0:39:14 > 0:39:17In his bible, entitled The Great Tradition,
0:39:17 > 0:39:19FR Leavis asserted
0:39:19 > 0:39:24that there are only five truly great novelists writing in English.
0:39:24 > 0:39:25And they were
0:39:25 > 0:39:28DH Lawrence, Henry James,
0:39:28 > 0:39:31Joseph Conrad, George Eliot,
0:39:31 > 0:39:36and then, the writer he declared the mother of the great tradition,
0:39:36 > 0:39:37Jane Austen.
0:39:37 > 0:39:42FR and his wife Queenie both taught the young Janet Todd
0:39:42 > 0:39:45when she was a student in Cambridge in the '60s.
0:39:46 > 0:39:51It was right after the war, and I think the Leavises both thought
0:39:51 > 0:39:54that English literature was going to save civilisation.
0:39:54 > 0:39:57We were to learn it and get it correct
0:39:57 > 0:39:59and then we were to go out into the big world
0:39:59 > 0:40:02and in a sense, preach the doctrine of English literature.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05So I think there was a real didactic aim in it.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09At the same time, they despised didacticism in literature,
0:40:09 > 0:40:11which is why they liked Jane Austen.
0:40:11 > 0:40:15Man Booker Prize Winner Howard Jacobson,
0:40:15 > 0:40:18who roguishly calls himself the Jewish Jane Austen,
0:40:18 > 0:40:22was also a student of the Leavises.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25He was the "words on the page" man.
0:40:25 > 0:40:27That was the phrase, the words on the page.
0:40:27 > 0:40:31And that was why I went to him. I was interested in the words on the page
0:40:31 > 0:40:34and that was why I'd got to Jane Austen myself,
0:40:34 > 0:40:37because of the words on the page. Nothing extraneous.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41Leavis said Jane Austen is as serious a writer as you get
0:40:41 > 0:40:45and the fact that she is as funny as she is doesn't detract from the seriousness,
0:40:45 > 0:40:48indeed contributes to the seriousness.
0:40:48 > 0:40:51But these are as serious novels as you get.
0:40:51 > 0:40:56Leavis argues about society, about morality,
0:40:56 > 0:40:59about the relation between manners and morality
0:40:59 > 0:41:05and I had no difficulty reading her that way too when I got to Cambridge.
0:41:05 > 0:41:11So what are the qualities that they really praised in Jane Austen?
0:41:11 > 0:41:14Because we have this... If she's been praised in the 19th century
0:41:14 > 0:41:18for her kind of homely virtue and her domestic heroines,
0:41:18 > 0:41:23and then she seems to be praised in the early 20th century for her wit,
0:41:23 > 0:41:27where is the moral force that Leavis would have loved in her?
0:41:27 > 0:41:31Well, I think it's a moral complexity. That's what they like.
0:41:31 > 0:41:36And it's not Pride And Prejudice primarily, it's Mansfield Park.
0:41:36 > 0:41:41And Queenie says that Mansfield Park is the first modern novel.
0:41:45 > 0:41:47Alas it was almost Crawford's doing.
0:41:47 > 0:41:51She had seen her influence in every speech and was miserable.
0:41:51 > 0:41:53The doubts and alarms as to her own conduct
0:41:53 > 0:41:55which had previously distressed her
0:41:55 > 0:41:57and which had all slept while she listened to him
0:41:57 > 0:42:00will become of little consequence now.
0:42:00 > 0:42:03This deeper anxiety swallowed them up.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06Things should take their course, she cared not how it ended.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10Her cousins might attack, but could hardly tease her.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14She was beyond their reach and if at last obliged to yield -
0:42:14 > 0:42:16no matter - it was all misery now.
0:42:16 > 0:42:19Mansfield Park, interestingly,
0:42:19 > 0:42:22was probably the novel that we did most at Cambridge,
0:42:22 > 0:42:24that we thought most about at Cambridge.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27It was the one that had that air of being, you know,
0:42:27 > 0:42:33a serious investigation of the mores of that society.
0:42:33 > 0:42:37- Fanny, we want your services. - Yes. I'm here.
0:42:37 > 0:42:39You needn't leave your seat.
0:42:39 > 0:42:41We don't want you now, but for the play.
0:42:41 > 0:42:43- You must be Cottager's wife.- No!
0:42:43 > 0:42:46Indeed you must excuse me.
0:42:46 > 0:42:49I could not act for anything if you were to give me the world.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52No, indeed. I cannot.
0:42:52 > 0:42:58The tragedy just under the surface of that world of high morals,
0:42:58 > 0:43:02of how snobbery or a certain kind of laxity here and there
0:43:02 > 0:43:05could lead to the most terrible consequences.
0:43:05 > 0:43:08I'm quite ashamed of you, Fanny, to make such a difficulty
0:43:08 > 0:43:11of obliging your cousins in such a trifle,
0:43:11 > 0:43:15so kind as they are to you. Take the part with a good grace and let us hear no more of it.
0:43:15 > 0:43:18Do not urge her, madam. It is not fair to urge her.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21I am not going to urge her,
0:43:21 > 0:43:24but I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl
0:43:24 > 0:43:27if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her.
0:43:27 > 0:43:30Very ungrateful indeed, considering who and what she is.
0:43:34 > 0:43:38While Jane Austen was being read with a new seriousness
0:43:38 > 0:43:40at the academic high table,
0:43:40 > 0:43:44she was also settling down with a new mass audience
0:43:44 > 0:43:47in cinemas and sitting rooms up and down the country.
0:43:49 > 0:43:54You've taken me to the movies to see an MGM costume drama.
0:43:54 > 0:43:57- Set the scene.- We're in 1940, the year this film was made.
0:43:57 > 0:44:01This is MGM's production of Pride And Prejudice.
0:44:01 > 0:44:04Big budget film. You can see the money up on the screen there,
0:44:04 > 0:44:08- all those costumes, all that costume jewellery.- Lots of glittering.
0:44:08 > 0:44:11The star is Lawrence Olivier, Mr Darcy.
0:44:11 > 0:44:15A great screen lover of the period, full of burning, savage romance.
0:44:15 > 0:44:18- Marvellous! - And his co-star is Greer Garson.
0:44:18 > 0:44:23I am afraid that the honour of standing up with you, Mr Darcy, is more than I can bear.
0:44:23 > 0:44:25Pray excuse me.
0:44:25 > 0:44:29- Is this the first Austen film adaptation?- Yes, it is.
0:44:29 > 0:44:34Austen was almost untouched by film makers until this point.
0:44:34 > 0:44:40- Between 1897 and 1915 there were 60 Dickens films made.- 60?
0:44:40 > 0:44:4360. Not a single Austen one.
0:44:43 > 0:44:45The silents weren't interested in her
0:44:45 > 0:44:48really because the dialogue is the joy of it, isn't it?
0:44:48 > 0:44:50There's no big-action set pieces.
0:44:50 > 0:44:52And now we see...
0:44:52 > 0:44:58This, like most films of the period, went to a stage adaptation for inspiration
0:44:58 > 0:45:03and I think the original audience of this film would have watched this as though it was one of those.
0:45:03 > 0:45:07So they're not coming to it as readers of Jane Austen, then?
0:45:07 > 0:45:12Or fans of Jane Austen thinking, "Let's see our beloved Jane on screen?"
0:45:12 > 0:45:15This is a hit Broadway comedy. That's what this is.
0:45:19 > 0:45:21So what are you showing me now?
0:45:21 > 0:45:23- This is 1967.- Oh, we've leapt on.
0:45:23 > 0:45:28Yeah. This is a BBC costume drama from the period.
0:45:28 > 0:45:30This young man, who is he?
0:45:30 > 0:45:35A young man of large fortune from the north of England.
0:45:35 > 0:45:39It's Sunday teatime here and this is important, I think,
0:45:39 > 0:45:44because the classic serial was for many years a children's slot, really.
0:45:44 > 0:45:46Teatime drama on a Sunday night.
0:45:46 > 0:45:51It's not use to me his being extremely rich if he's forever flying from one place to another.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54I begin to wonder whether he'll be so great an asset to...
0:45:54 > 0:45:59- But this is going out at the same time as The Forsyte Saga.- Of course.
0:45:59 > 0:46:03BBC Two, later in the evening, for grown-ups.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06So this is like the junior version of the Forsyth Saga.
0:46:06 > 0:46:08- Without the sex, then? - Without the sex...
0:46:08 > 0:46:12- Irene!- Yes, without Irene pinioned!
0:46:12 > 0:46:14THEY LAUGH
0:46:17 > 0:46:24But even then Austen is not really one of the major writers for this kind of slot.
0:46:24 > 0:46:27Still the teatime classic serial was very much the preserve of
0:46:27 > 0:46:30- Robert Louis Stevenson and Dickens and much more.- Oh, Kidnapped?
0:46:30 > 0:46:34Absolutely. So you would see Kidnapped or Oliver Twist
0:46:34 > 0:46:37or St Ives or Dombey And Son, something like that.
0:46:41 > 0:46:45So here we are, 1980 Pride And Prejudice.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50This is the first adaptation that I remember vividly.
0:46:50 > 0:46:53Is it a classier production?
0:46:53 > 0:46:55Much more so. It's much more expensive.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58The lighting's much more complicated.
0:46:58 > 0:47:00There's much more location filming in it.
0:47:00 > 0:47:03The plain style is very different too.
0:47:03 > 0:47:08It's much less of a feeling of being trapped inside the Quality Street tin with this.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11There's a subtly to it and an authenticity to the costumes.
0:47:11 > 0:47:13We're clearly in the right period.
0:47:13 > 0:47:15Is this on BBC One, BBC Two? What time?
0:47:15 > 0:47:19This is BBC Two and this is Sunday night.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21- So it's at 9 o'clock?- Mm.- Top slot.
0:47:21 > 0:47:25This is a slot that for a decade or so at this point
0:47:25 > 0:47:31has been associated with high-end, thoughtful, literary adaptation.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34So it's the Laura Ashley version, then? The Heritage paint?
0:47:34 > 0:47:37- Very much so, very much so.- Oh! - Here he comes.
0:47:37 > 0:47:38Oh, it's marvellous!
0:47:38 > 0:47:41- ..this stupid manner... - Dance with such company?
0:47:41 > 0:47:43Look at those cheek bones. My word.
0:47:43 > 0:47:46So is this the moment you became an Austen scholar?
0:47:46 > 0:47:49I think it might be!
0:47:50 > 0:47:54- I do remember there was a... - Are you having an epiphany now?
0:47:54 > 0:47:58Yeah! We all we all had a bit of a pash on David Rintoul.
0:47:58 > 0:47:59Look at that!
0:47:59 > 0:48:03Oh, she's the most beautiful creature I ever beheld.
0:48:03 > 0:48:05Austen seems to have achieved the status now
0:48:05 > 0:48:10of kind of heritage entertainment for adults,
0:48:10 > 0:48:12utterly tasteful and restrained.
0:48:12 > 0:48:17Yes, the tone of these adaptations has changed very dramatically.
0:48:17 > 0:48:23It's risen from the status of historical fun of some kind
0:48:23 > 0:48:26to an object of veneration.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30And then, it seems to me,
0:48:30 > 0:48:34that in 1995 it all kind of goes ballistic really.
0:48:34 > 0:48:38That's the moment she goes from being BBC Two to BBC One,
0:48:38 > 0:48:40from niche to mainstream.
0:48:40 > 0:48:45She does seem to take on a different kind of weight in the world really.
0:48:45 > 0:48:49Maybe the producers finally know who she is.
0:48:51 > 0:48:56The big difference in the 1995 adaptation
0:48:56 > 0:49:02is famously how much sex Andrew Davies pumped back into that production.
0:49:02 > 0:49:07- That is the moment that happens. We all know the image that's coming next.- I can't bear it!
0:49:25 > 0:49:32In 1995, the actor Colin Firth emerged from the lake at Pemberley
0:49:32 > 0:49:37in a sopping-wet linen shirt and walked straight into female fantasy.
0:49:37 > 0:49:41Pride And Prejudice with added testosterone,
0:49:41 > 0:49:45potent fuel that launched a truly global brand.
0:49:50 > 0:49:51Mr Darcy!
0:49:52 > 0:49:53Miss Bennett.
0:49:53 > 0:49:55I did not expect to see you, sir.
0:49:55 > 0:49:59We understood all the family were from home or we would never have presumed.
0:50:01 > 0:50:02Excuse me.
0:50:06 > 0:50:10Over the last two decades, thanks to both cinema
0:50:10 > 0:50:15and Andrew Davies' sexy TV version of Regency gentility,
0:50:15 > 0:50:18Jane Austen has leapt from classic author
0:50:18 > 0:50:20into the realm of cult status.
0:50:23 > 0:50:27Back in Texas, that same Andrew Davies is the star turn
0:50:27 > 0:50:31at the Jane Austen Society Convention.
0:50:32 > 0:50:35I have a very quick question.
0:50:35 > 0:50:40Could you tell me why when Elizabeth accepts Darcy
0:50:40 > 0:50:45that I don't see any real emotion on his part
0:50:45 > 0:50:47that he's really happy about it?
0:50:47 > 0:50:50Very good question. and thank you very much
0:50:50 > 0:50:53for pointing out the only bad thing about the film!
0:50:53 > 0:50:55LAUGHTER
0:50:59 > 0:51:03Outside the hall, I asked Andrew why he'd wanted to adapt
0:51:03 > 0:51:06Pride And Prejudice in the first place.
0:51:06 > 0:51:09I thought that all the previous adaptations
0:51:09 > 0:51:12had completely missed the fact that it's about sex and money
0:51:12 > 0:51:17and that the engine of the plot is Darcy's desire for Elizabeth.
0:51:17 > 0:51:22I wanted to emphasise the physicality.
0:51:22 > 0:51:26It's about young people with hormones,
0:51:26 > 0:51:29so lots and lots of galloping horses,
0:51:29 > 0:51:33lots and lots of opportunity for the audience to see the actors
0:51:33 > 0:51:38- with as many of their clothes off... - I did notice that! - ..as seemed compatible and decent.
0:51:38 > 0:51:42So you really developed, I think, the character of Darcy, didn't you?
0:51:42 > 0:51:47I mean, for me, it seems as if you kind of made him almost more like Mr Rochester.
0:51:47 > 0:51:49There's a bit of Bronte in your Austen.
0:51:49 > 0:51:55Um, I don't think I was changing his character in the least from what Jane Austen did.
0:51:55 > 0:51:58What I was doing was trying to give the audience
0:51:58 > 0:52:02a chance to see the story from his point of view as well as hers.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08But you did something similar, I think, in Sense And Sensibility.
0:52:08 > 0:52:10Absolutely.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14I think Jane Austen missed a trick or two in Sense And Sensibility...
0:52:14 > 0:52:17- You'd better not say that here! - I am going to say it here.
0:52:17 > 0:52:23Because the guys that get the girls in Sense And Sensibility,
0:52:23 > 0:52:26on the face of it, are not worthy of them
0:52:26 > 0:52:29and so I thought they really needed butching up.
0:52:30 > 0:52:32So that's what I did.
0:52:32 > 0:52:35- You added testosterone to it. - Er, yes.
0:52:35 > 0:52:38What impact do you think the adaptations have
0:52:38 > 0:52:41on the readership of the books themselves?
0:52:41 > 0:52:45Well, I think there's been a change in a lot of ways,
0:52:45 > 0:52:49because a lot of kids, a lot of students,
0:52:49 > 0:52:53come to the books through the adaptations.
0:52:53 > 0:52:59Well, it's a good way to get school kids in particular to read the books.
0:52:59 > 0:53:02So what's happening to the Austen brand now?
0:53:02 > 0:53:05Do you think her popularity has peaked for a while?
0:53:05 > 0:53:11I think it might have peaked over here in the West, at any rate.
0:53:11 > 0:53:17I'm not sure whether we've heard enough from the Chinese, from the Far East, in fact.
0:53:17 > 0:53:23I don't know when... Because there's a huge enthusiasm for Jane Austen in Japan
0:53:23 > 0:53:25and increasingly in China as well.
0:53:25 > 0:53:29So we've had Southern California, Bollywood and next stop China?
0:53:29 > 0:53:32Well, that's my bet.
0:53:33 > 0:53:37So what is it in Austen's prose that has allowed her
0:53:37 > 0:53:42to be both so freely adapted and so widely read?
0:53:43 > 0:53:45I think there is a clue to her magic
0:53:45 > 0:53:48in the Hampshire village where she was born.
0:53:48 > 0:53:51One of the most surprising things about Jane Austen
0:53:51 > 0:53:55is just how very little we know about her.
0:53:55 > 0:53:59This is the site of the vicarage where she was born
0:53:59 > 0:54:01and spent a large part of her life.
0:54:01 > 0:54:05It's all nettles and cowpats today,
0:54:05 > 0:54:08so you have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks,
0:54:08 > 0:54:12which is just what Jane Austen trusted her readers to be able to do.
0:54:16 > 0:54:18Open any of Austen's novels
0:54:18 > 0:54:21and you won't get bogged down in descriptive details.
0:54:22 > 0:54:27For example, all we are ever really told about Willoughby or Darcy's looks
0:54:27 > 0:54:30is that they are uncommonly handsome.
0:54:30 > 0:54:35Austen leaves room for the reader's intelligence and fantasies,
0:54:35 > 0:54:40which has the uncanny effect of allowing each new generation
0:54:40 > 0:54:44to see themselves reflected back from her pages.
0:54:52 > 0:54:57I think it's her spare, restrained style of writing
0:54:57 > 0:55:01that has also allowed Austen to be so widely reinvented
0:55:01 > 0:55:04and ultimately popularised.
0:55:07 > 0:55:10I bet Austen's satirical pen would have got to work on
0:55:10 > 0:55:14this eccentric convention thrown in her honour.
0:55:14 > 0:55:20But for the 600 delegates having fun living the Jane Austen life for a weekend,
0:55:20 > 0:55:25this is all an attempt to unlock the fiction they love so much.
0:55:27 > 0:55:31Cheryl Kinney is a doctor from Dallas and chair of this year's event.
0:55:31 > 0:55:33What I've been struck by
0:55:33 > 0:55:36is the incredible intellectual firepower you've got here.
0:55:36 > 0:55:41I mean, you're a gynaecologist, there's judges, teachers, journalists,
0:55:41 > 0:55:44but ordinary readers and fans all mixing together.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47And that's the wonderful thing about Jane Austen,
0:55:47 > 0:55:50that you can enjoy her on so many levels.
0:55:50 > 0:55:53You can just enjoy the films, you can know the books verbatim,
0:55:53 > 0:55:56and we embrace everyone and that's what's so much fun.
0:55:56 > 0:56:02You're working hard to dispel any kind of old-fashioned, chintzy view of Jane Austen.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06Well, absolutely, and this year we worked very hard on that.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10One of our sponsors provided us with black lace panties.
0:56:10 > 0:56:12- Oh, my word!- Yes!
0:56:12 > 0:56:15And in each bag was a note from John Willoughby
0:56:15 > 0:56:17that said to call him.
0:56:17 > 0:56:20"Call me! XOXO Willoughby." What does he say?
0:56:20 > 0:56:23Well, when you call him on the phone it says,
0:56:23 > 0:56:27"Hi, I'm John. This is John Willoughby and I'm not available this weekend.
0:56:27 > 0:56:31"Come to New York in 2012 for sex, power and money."
0:56:31 > 0:56:35- Which is the next conference.- But also you have all this other stuff.
0:56:35 > 0:56:40- Team Willoughby?- Yes. - I'm amazed that a gynaecologist would support Willoughby.
0:56:40 > 0:56:44Well, as I said, unless I'm trying to make money from sexually transmitted diseases.
0:56:44 > 0:56:49You won't put that on, will you? Oh, that just slipped out!
0:56:49 > 0:56:51AMANDA HOWLS WITH LAUGHTER
0:56:54 > 0:56:58This gathering of readers displays a defining aspect
0:56:58 > 0:57:01of Austen's long-lasting power.
0:57:04 > 0:57:08Plenty of men love Austen, but from the outset these books
0:57:08 > 0:57:14by a woman, about women, always created a sense of female community,
0:57:14 > 0:57:18from the ladies of Althorp onwards.
0:57:18 > 0:57:20Amongst this extremely diverse group
0:57:20 > 0:57:26I think the main attraction is still that strong sense of sisterhood.
0:57:27 > 0:57:34I'm really moved by the warmth of the community of fans, scholars and readers,
0:57:34 > 0:57:37all united by their love for Jane Austen.
0:57:38 > 0:57:43But perhaps that's actually what's unique about Austen as a writer.
0:57:43 > 0:57:47She seems to have pulled off what seems an impossible combination
0:57:47 > 0:57:51of academic prestige and popular devotion.
0:57:52 > 0:57:55- To Jane! - ALL: To Jane!
0:57:55 > 0:57:57Very good.
0:57:57 > 0:57:58Ooh!
0:58:02 > 0:58:06# Happy trails to you
0:58:06 > 0:58:10# Until we meet again
0:58:10 > 0:58:14# Happy trails to you
0:58:14 > 0:58:21# Till we meet again. #
0:58:21 > 0:58:24Happy trails, everyone. Have a good night.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:28 > 0:58:30E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk