The Women Who Made Jane Austen
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What is the significance of Jane Austen's 250th birthday?
Sophie, today is the Halley's Comet Day of literature, isn't it? Is it ever. This is today the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. I mean, how extraordinary the secret life of books is in the world in order to capture and respond to this wonderful moment.
You're so right to capture footage of this historic occasion. Can you believe that the comet came around today? In our lifetime, Jonty, in the lifetime of The Secret Life of Books, almost, I mean, this is where things get really cosmic, almost exactly coinciding with the first birthday of The Secret Life of Books, which we've just celebrated. It's as though there is intelligent design, surely.
That's right. This is The Secret Life of Books. I am Jonty Claypole. I, well, I'm afraid men do not come out well of this episode. So I am going to position myself as a progressive, modern feminist sympathizer who has no connection at all with the men we'll be talking about later in this episode.
Nice. And I'm Sophie Gee. I'm an academic. I'm a writer. And like the other heroic women of this episode, I'm a bolter. I'm a fighter. I'm a writer. I like to duel with pistols. I like to flee from oppressive men in my life. And I've always got a pen in my hand ready to dash off the latest scandalous, scurrilous novel.
This episode, The Women Who Made Jane Austen.
So as surely every listener to this podcast will know, today is the day. Jane Austen's 250th birthday, December the 16th, 2025. Happy birthday, Jane. It's never been a better time to be in the Austen business. It is a boom, which is, of course, too bad for Austen herself. There's so much Austen out there. There's the fabulous new book by Devani Losa, Wild for Austen, which uncovers this whole side to Austen that we suspected but weren't 100% sure about, which is this subversive, sometimes politically radical, always challenging version of everyone's favourite female writer that There's another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice coming our way, written by Dolly Alderton with Olivia Colman, another heroic figure.
There's worldwide. Cosplay happening, even as we speak, with bonnets and Regency dresses. The streets of Bath. I mean, it's a riot. It's turned into a riot town on the 16th of December. And there's any number of other Jane Austen events and spinoffs all over the world. So I think we have to think of this as the age of big Austen. in which two or three families in a nice country village have been transformed into a global rom-com industry.
But what we're doing today, Sophie, is we're revealing the big secret behind Jane Austen's life and work. And let me explain what I mean by that. We tend to see Jane Austen as a lone genius. And I think that is the unhappy side effect of Big Austen, as you describe it. We see her as standing alone. And I think many people, if asked to name another woman writer from the late 18th, early 19th century, might struggle. It would be sort of Jane Austen and then the Brontes. But Jane Austen was, in fact, just a particularly brilliant member of a wider social and literary movement. She was great, but she was great because she stood on the shoulders of giants or rather the bonnets of giantesses. So in this episode, we're going to introduce you to some of those women.
We're going to introduce you to the bolters, the badasses, the barnstormers, the bold adventurers, the bloody minded and the bloody brilliant. These are writers we love both because of their books. and because they refused to be pinned down by the limitations of their age, and because they so inspired Jane herself. And we're going to send everyone listening away with a reading list of one book by each trailblazer that we would love you to consider reading.
Yeah, and these really are fantastic, fabulous books. All of them just have so much going on and they're true page turners. Okay, so let's back it up. Let's start by reminding ourselves that the novel, by the time Jane Austen was writing, was about 100 years old, almost exactly. Sense and Sensibility was published in 1813, and people normally think of the first novel in English as being Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the significance of Jane Austen's 250th birthday?
0:00–15:07
2
Who are the influential women writers that shaped Jane Austen?
15:07–21:02
3
How did early novels reflect women's experiences in the 18th century?
21:02–57:04
4
What role did Frances Burney play in Jane Austen's literary development?
57:04–1:05:54