Anna Walker
speaker
274 appearances
5 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 2 Jul
Anna Walker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Jane Austen is often revered as a master of the psychological novel.
But what did her own interior world look like?
Coming up, I sit down with two experts to find out, after this short break.
Welcome back.
Freya Johnston, you're a professor of English at St Anne's College at the University of Oxford and the author of Jane Austen, Early and Late.
Welcome to the podcast, Freya.
And John Mullen, you're a professor of modern English literature at the University College London and the author of What Matters in Jane Austen.
Welcome, John.
As I've been working on this podcast series, I've asked many people what their favourite Jane Austen book is, and I've been surprised by how many people say Persuasion.
It has its share of famous fans too.
The poet Alfred Tennyson paid a visit to Lyme Regis in 1867, specifically to see locations from the novel.
John, why do you think Persuasion resonates with so many people?
Well, Anne Elliot, as you've alluded to there, John, the protagonist of Persuasion, is perhaps Austen's most melancholic heroine.
For me, Austen's death before the publication of the novel makes its portrait of a woman looking back at her life with regret all the more striking.
John, do you think Austen was in a particularly reflective mood when she wrote this novel?
Well, looking to another source then, Freya, you're currently writing a book on Austen's letters.
Does her correspondence generally paint a portrait of a happy woman?
Are there any examples you can give us?
And she does seem to get great pleasure from advising her niece on writing, doesn't she?
One thing I love about Persuasion is the depth of its emotional storytelling and how we get a sense of the emotional state of almost all the principal characters.
Showing 201–220 of 274 · page 11 of 14
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