John Mullan

Maybe Lizzie and Emma disagree.

I don't see that as a reflection of Austen's own experiences.

And I think that her own basically very happy family, immediate family, was terrific support and resource for her, actually.

And she knew she was quite lucky.

If you look at other novelists, they really do put real people in.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

He's basically bulletproof in terms of criminal prosecution.

Hello.

Well, I think it resonates with people once they've passed the age of 40, probably, particularly, because of all Jane Austen's novels.

It is the most melancholy and also, in an old-fashioned way, the most romantic.

It's a heroine who thinks she's missed her chance of happiness in life, really, and then she gets a second chance.

And I think that that resonates with people when they get a bit further on in life.

It was possible that she was in a reflective mood because she was beginning to ail with the illness that was eventually to kill her.

But she wouldn't have known that.

But I don't think the melancholy in the book represents somehow the author's melancholy at all.

I sort of don't think Jane Austen was that sort of novelist, actually.

It's worth saying about the letters that they are quite unusual because many authors, the letters we enjoy and find interesting, are written to other authors and they're about writing and about the life of writing.

And Jane Austen's letters, the vast majority are to her sister Cassandra.

And they're really to Cassandra, they're not to us, they're not to posterity.