Jane Austen Through the Ages
Today Jane Austen is regarded as one of the greats of English literature. But it was not always so. Amanda Vickery describes the changing nature of Austen’s reception in the two centuries since her birth.
Our programme is not a narrow study of Jane Austen; nor is it a biography. Instead The Many Lovers of Jane Austen takes a historical view of one of the best loved figures in English literature.
Austen was the subject of a long Victorian eclipse. During the 1820s and 1830s she was barely read at all. Her funeral at Winchester Cathedral was sparsely attended; the memorial that stands there today is largely made up of Victorian additions. It took a long time for her to regain her literary reputation.
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