Anna Walker

Well, I've forgotten most of what I learned at GCSE Science, so I'd say Austin and I are in a similar boat.

Moving on to a question from Clementine Burney.

Clementine would like to know, would Jane Austen have considered herself a feminist?

Emma, what do you think on that one?

Izzy and John, do either of you want to come in on that one as well?

I think we see in her letters as well, there's really nothing Austen won't find a way to make funny.

There's some really black humour, as we've talked about in the podcast, in those letters.

Tiffany Adams asks, as modern readers, we don't always fully understand the context of living in Austen's day, whether that's the marriage dynamics, the local places, traditions, global issues, and yet we still really enjoy her stories.

How much more or less do people appreciate Austen's stories in her own time period?

Did Austen have a good following for her books while she was alive?

Lizzie, could you take this one, please?

Because she was publishing anonymously at the time.

Our panel will answer more of your great questions after this short break.

We're back with our panel, John Mullen, Emma-Claire Sweeney and Lizzie Dunford, answering some of your listener questions.

So next up, we've got a question from Sydney Chafer-Melly, who asks, what do you think Jane Austen would have made of social media?

Emma, would she have been taking selfies and filming TikToks?

What vision do you have of Austen looking at her social media feed?

I'm not sure Wentworth's letter would have been quite as powerful if he had slid into her DMs, though, as it was writing it down in the book.

Okay, a question here, a bit more about Austen's works themselves, from a listener called Kieran Garvey.

He writes,