Sophie Gee

deep dive into the mind state of a woman who believes herself to have a terminal illness.

It's about the kind of taboos and unspeakable truths of women's bodies in the period.

It has a black character, black Caribbean man called Juba, who comes as a servant with a wealthy Creole and who marries an English farm girl.

So there's an interracial marriage in it.

You know, there's sort of nowhere she won't go.

And I'll just read a couple of snippets of Edgeworth to give a flavour of how her voice, too, really helps shape Jane Austen's.

So this is from Castle Rackrent.

She says, We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public.

It's from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope, with the greatest probability of success, to discover their real characters.

I think that's very Austen.

And this is how she introduces the hero, sort of hero, of Belinda.

Clarence Harvey might have been more than a pleasant young man if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in everything and of being the most admired person in all companies.

So Austen.

So Austen.

He had considerable literary talents by which he was distinguished at Oxford, but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge.

His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed.

He could be all things to all men and to all women.

Great character introduction.

Totally worthy of Austin.

In fact, if you heard that, you'd think it was Austin.