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- This is the world of
a Jane Austen novel,

an elegant Georgian drawing room.

I could just imagine Emma
Woodhouse taking tea,

Anne Elliot reading poetry,

or even Mr. Darcy

warming his britches before the fire.

It seems a safe, domesticated landscape.

And it's the setting for his
stories of the court ships

of intelligent, polite

and privileged young ladies.

But why on Earth are millions of us

still reading these period romances?

How has this genteel fiction

become a 21st century global phenomenon?

Over the last 200 years,

Austen's books have traveled a long way,

from the libraries of aristocrats

to cheap railway bookstores.

- She produced fiction,

which had a sort of a self-possession

and a technical audacity,

which was unparalleled
anywhere else in Europe.

- She was adored by soldiers

and she found stardom
on stage and onscreen.

- She goes from niche to mainstream.

- What's more in every era,

her readers have found
something personal, important,

and new in her words.

- No one has known how to make love,

read so important as she has.

- As a historian and an unashamed fan,

I'm fascinated by the
story of how an anonymous

minor novelist in her own lifetime

became celebrated today

as our very best love writer.

This is Fort Worth, Texas.

And if you wanted to know

just how successful Jane Austen is today,

hold your horses and look no further

because this weekend,

the Stetsons have been
outnumbered by the Bomics,

as Fort Worth plays host
to the Jane Austen Society

of North America's Annual convention.

The biggest international celebration

for an author whose fame ranked
second only to Shakespeare.

This gloriously eccentric hotel convention

demonstrates the rampant commercialization

of the world Jane Austen made.

There's an extraordinary
array of merchandise,

spin-offs from the Austen brand.

"Jane and the Damned".

Austen has chick flicks.

"Clueless", "Emma" updated
to an American high school.

And here we have Bollywood's,
"Bride & Prejudice".

It's an astounding phenomenon.

But underneath all the
dressing up and the role-play,

the spin-offs and the merchandise,

there are plenty of
committed Austen readers.

- I liked the way she characterizes people

and the people that she writes about,

you can still see today.

- I think anyone who's ever been in love

will find an equal in one of her novels.

- She has a wonderful, ironic tone

that makes me think

and gives me a sense of history

and romance and great literature.

- Here in Texas, Jane
Austen, the commercial brand,

dances hand in hand with an
appreciation of Jane Austen,

a serious novelist.

And it's this partnership

that gives Austen a unique position

in the world of literature.

At Sotheby's in London,

the International Sale Rooms,

Brand Austen is the big
attraction at today's auction.

- 220?

240?

260-

- This is the sale of a
rare Jane Austen fragment.

In her short life, Austen only
produced six complete novels

and every surviving scrap of her writing

is of immense interest,

especially if the manuscript
is in her own hand.

Here are 60 precious pages
of an uncompleted novel

written while she was living in Bath.

Earlier on, I was lucky
enough to be given a peak

at the manuscript before
it went onto the hammer.

I've never seen a Jane
Austen manuscript before.

- Yeah, it is a wonderful thing.

It's so exciting to actually see,

see her handwriting.

And of course, not just her handwriting,

it's not just a letter.

It's actually a literary manuscript

and not just a literary manuscript,

but a working manuscript,
as you can see it,

careful corrections.

- This is the only
manuscript draft, isn't it,

of her unfinished novel?

- Yeah, that's right.

- "The Watsons".
- Yeah, yeah.

- It's a very tantalizing
fragment, isn't it?

- Yes.

- Your lordship thinks,

we always have our own way.

That is a point on which
ladies and gentlemen

long disagreed,

but without pretending to decide it,

I may say that there
are some circumstances

which even women cannot control.

Female economy will do
a great deal, my Lord,

but it cannot turn a small
income into a large one.

Absolutely.

I think what's really most important

about this piece of work is it's content.

And that seems to be quite explosive

because there's a real
angry voice in this,

which is overlaid with
more elegance, I think,

in the other novels,

Who do you think are going
to be the big bidders?

- I mean obviously, I can't-

- Obviously, I can't.

I can't.

What sort of figure do you expect to get?

- The estimate is a 200 to 300,000 pounds.

- That's 650 in the room.

680, thank you.

700,000, thank you.

- It's beginning
to look as if Gabriel

was being ever so slightly cautious.

- 720, thank you.

750, thank you.

- There are two very committed bidders.

And we've now reached nearly
three times the estimate.

- Yeah, 800,000, thank you.

Last chance there, at 800,000.

820, I have now.

850.

No, it's in the room.

On the aisle, anybody else?

At 850.

Last chance, against your...

No regrets, at 850.

Yours, thank you.

- "The Watsons" has just sold
for a stunning 850,000 pounds.

So that's three times the estimate.

I think that's an amazing achievement

for a woman who struggled
in genteel poverty.

At her death, her manuscripts
were burnt or scattered

or just given away.

And now, she's provoked

just for a little fragment of a novel,

a global bidding war.

And the buyer who saved the
manuscript for the nation

was non other than the
Bodleian Library in Oxford.

It's a huge price to pay

and clear proof that Austen's
academic status today

is just as potent as her commercial brand.

So how did Austen become
our national treasure?

To find the answer, you
have to look at the history

of how she was read.

Who was reading her and why?

The very first people to read
Jane Austen were her family.

We know that Jane Austen
was clever and precocious.

She was writing by the age of 12,

but then she was born
into a big bookish family.

All her brothers and her
beloved sister, Cassandra,

all of them loved reading,
rereading, reading aloud,

writing, drawing, and amateur theatricals.

- Come on!

- The Austens
adored putting on plays

for family and friends.

- Let's turn back quickly.

- Very well.

But hasn't this walk
been invigorating, ow!

- And even today,

the locals still relish
of this alfresco theater.

- I think I've twisted my ankle.

- Would you allow me to
offer my services, madame?

- The teenage Jane was theatrical,

irreverent and prolific,

dashing off romantic parodies and satires

for the entertainment
of her clever siblings

and bookish relatives.

By early twenties,

Jane Austen had completed
drafts of two novels,

"First Impressions" and
"Elinor And Marianne".

But it would be another 14 years

and numerous disappointments

before she was finally published.

- "Elinor And Marianne"
became "Sense and Sensibility"

and first went on sale 200
years ago in October, 1811.

- Oh sir, how may I thank you?

May I ask whom I'm so obliged?

- His name, he replied, was...

- Willoughby, madam,

currently of .

- His manly beauty,

and more than common gracefulness

were instantly the theme
of general admiration

and the laugh, which his gallantry raised

against Marianne received
particular spirit

from his exterior attractions.

Marianne, herself, had seen
less of his person than the rest

for the confusion,

which crimsoned over her
face on his lifting her up,

had robbed her of the
power of regarding him

after their entering of the house.

But the people who first
enjoyed these words

had no idea who was writing them.

Why do you think Jane Austen
published anonymously?

- Well, people say that it
was because she was so modest

and unassuming.
- No.

- Which is bologna actually,

because Sir Walter Scott

who was the bestselling
novelist of the age,

also published anonymously.

- So it's a polite convention only then?

- Yeah, it's a polite convention,

which enabled her to have
quite a lot of fun actually,

because of course, people guessed a lot.

A lady in the village

and Mrs. Ben came 'round

and "Pride and Prejudice"
had just been delivered

and Jane Austen and her
mum took turns reading out

about half of the novel
over several hours.

And Mrs. Ben was delighted
and said how brilliant

the author must be.

And Jane Austen didn't tell
her that it was herself.

I think she quite like
those sorts of games.

- But, calling it "By a Lady",

it's not utterly anonymous.

So she makes it clear
that it's a female author.

Do you think that affects the way readers

would have viewed the novel at the time?

Do you think women are more
likely to buy a novel by a lady?

- I think, saying by a
lady on the title page

did affect people's expectations.

So I think they would have known

that it was an advertisement

for the kind of product they were getting.

They weren't gonna get roistering scenes

of sort of sexual impropriety.

- So would they expect, what,

a comedy of manners or a
romantic comedy in modern terms?

- I think, when you see
"By a Lady" on the cover,

what you expect is really
a tale of courtship.

You expect a story about a young woman

who is not married at the
beginning of the novel

and is married at the end.

- So who read that first edition
of "Sense and Sensibility"?

Although 750 copies were sold
in the next couple of years,

there aren't many clues
about who actually bought it,

but luckily, there are
letters from one woman,

Countess Despencer that prove
that "Sense and Sensibility"

was read with pleasure in this house.

Northrop is the breathtaking
Northamptonshire home

of the Spencer family.

I went to meet Earl Spencer

to talk to him about his regency
relative, Lady Bessborough

who wrote to a friend,

"'Have you read "Sense and Sensibility'?

"It is a clever novel.

"They were full of it at all at Northorp."

- Well, Lady Bessborough
is actually the lady

in the middle of the portrait there.

And she's one of the three
Spencers of that generation,

the most famous one being
the one on the left,

her sister, Georgina,
Duchess of Devonshire.

And Harriet was very much
her handmaiden and companion.

And we know she was great
fun, very, very amiable,

lovely, bright, sparkly person, Harriet,

and intensely loyal.

- I imagine this kind of
group of tufts sitting around,

reading, perhaps reading aloud,

have you any sense of
how the reading was done

in a room like this?

- I have, I mean,

I know from the diary entries
from my family at the time

that reading was taken
incredibly seriously.

Lady Bessborough and her family,

when they lived here, when they came here,

it was a buzzing, fizzing
place of new ideas.

You know, this was not some
stuffy aristocratic outpost.

This was a salon with
a crackling atmosphere

of intellect and discovery.

- Lady Bessborough
notoriously had a long affair

with a much younger man

who then married her niece.

You know, this is quite racy behavior.

So I wonder how they regard
the proprieties really

of a novel like "Sense and Sensibility".

- Well Lady Bessborough
did have a racy love life,

but I think that, you know,

you can have an unconventional love life

and still appreciate that
the more formal settings

of Jane Austen's novels

and the part of romance

and marriage and social
advancement in them.

- I think there must
be a strong possibility

that the women in the family
sympathized with Marianne,

because though they're aristocratic women,

they still have very constrained choices.

So I think they could
really engage with a novel,

which is about limited options.

- I think the fact that Lady Bessborough

and her sister were aristocrats

is sort of less important
than the gender, yes.

Lady Bessborough and her sister,

were both paired off with
incredibly eligible men

who they didn't like or love.

And so the whole business of marriage

and of aligning marriage
with social class,

they would have understood
that, very, very keenly.

- In the time of Jane Austen,

courtship was the defining test

in the life of a young woman,

but she was supposed to be
passive and self-controlled.

So how could she find out
whether a man was worthy?

Austen nails the desperate
torment of that struggle

with masterful understatement.

- Marianne, only half dressed,

was kneeling against
one of the window seats

for the sake of all the little light

she could command from it.

And writing as fast as a
continual flow of tears

would permit her.

In this situation,

Elinor, rouse from sleep
by her agitation and sobs,

first perceived her.

And after observing her for a few moments

with silent anxiety,

said in a tone of the most
considerate gentleness,

Marianne, may I ask?

No, Elinor, she replied.

Ask nothing.

You will soon know all.

The sort of desperate calmness
with which this was said

lasted no longer than while she spoke

and was immediately followed by a return

of the same excessive affliction.

It was some minutes before she
could go on with her letter

and the frequent bursts of grief,

which still obliged her at intervals

to withhold her pen,

were proofs enough of her feeling

how more than probable it
was that she was writing

for the last time to Willoughby.

- The story of
"Marianne and Elinor"

and their broken hearts

was appreciated by an audience
well beyond the libraries

of the aristocracy.

Books were expensive,

but thanks to the popular
circulating libraries,

Austen's novels also made
their way into the hands

of a wider public.

So how successful was she?

- I would say that by the
standards of Jane Austen's day,

in her own lifetime,

in that very short period of six years,

between her first published
novel and her death,

she's really very successful.

- Oh, you think?
- Oh, absolutely.

She publishes her first novel,
"Sense and Sensibility",

at her own expense.
- Hmm.

- That means she gets the profits from it.

And she earns 250 pounds
from "Sense and Sensibility".

And I mean, you don't actually
have to even compare it

to other writers earnings.

This is a time where perhaps the income

for a professional gentleman

who's doing quite well
might be 500 pounds a year.

So that's a really
substantial sum of money.

- Her literary career taking off,

Austen published three more
novels in quick succession,

"Pride and Prejudice", in 1813,

"Mansfield Park", in 1814,

and "Emma", in 1815.

But before she could see her
last two manuscripts in print,

"Northanger Abbey and Persuasion",

her health began to fail.

In 1817, Jane died in her sister's arms

at the age of only 41.

She was buried here in the
splendor of Winchester Cathedral,

but don't get the wrong idea.

This was no grand farewell.

Whatever success Austen had enjoyed

was certainly not translated
into public recognition.

Her early morning funeral was discreet

and sparsely attended.

This is her grave.

What's down in there?

She's actually buried beneath here.

In memory of Jane Austen.

Young daughter of the late
George Austen of Steventon.

What's she remembered for?

She's remembered as a daughter,

as a true Christian,

for the benevolence of her heart,

the sweetness of her temper

and the extraordinary
endowments of her mind.

But that's it,

nothing of her great novels.

So it seems at the very
moment of her death,

her great achievement

and her fragile prestige as a writer

is going to perish with her.

Within three years of her death,

Austen had fallen out of
fashion and out of print

and unsold copies of her stories

of polite rural society was
sold off by the publishers

at knockdown prices.

So what on Earth happened?

Well, the main culprit was romanticism.

Literally, fashion was turning
against the drawing room.

By the 1840s, it was dramatic
landscapes and wide horizons,

fiery desire and rebellion
that sat the pulses racing.

And no woman captured
humid passion on the page

quite like Charlotte Bronte.

As a Northern school girl,

there was absolutely no
escaping the Brontes.

We're forever here, in Haworth
Parsonage, on the coach,

was always raining,

but somehow this kind of
gloomy, pooky parsonage,

and the idea of the three
sisters writing and dying

seemed designed to appeal
to the teenage imagination.

Bronte is as deeply
associated with Yorkshire

and gloom and rain and Moors

as Jane Austen is with
Hampshire and sunshine.

And Charlotte was certainly
no Jane Austen fan.

She complained in letters to her friends.

- The passions

are perfectly unknown to her.

I should hardly like to live
with her ladies and gentlemen

in their elegant, but confined houses.

- Lucasta Miller
is a Bronte expert.

And I wondered if she could explain

Charlotte's attitude to Austen.

- I think it just suggest that Austen

just wasn't hugely popular
in the 1820s and '30s

when Charlotte Bronte was sort of,

as it were, doing her
apprenticeship as a writer.

I mean, she was a hugely voracious reader,

but what she was reading

was stuff that was completely opposed

to the Austen sensibility.

- Is it just that
the Bronte's found Austen

too sensible and suitable?

- Yeah, there's much more than that.

I think Bronte thought
that Austen was in denial

about human psychology.

I mean, Bronte, you know,

the sex instinct and the death instinct

are the things that you
get in the Bronte novels,

that sort of, you know,

pulling them right up to the surface

and Bronte thought that
Austen was shallow, prim,

superficial, sort of averting her eyes

from the truth about human nature.

- I would say that's a really
unfair caricature of Austen

because there's just as
much pain and suffering,

disinheritance, poverty,

outsiders and depression, there,

as there is in any Bronte novel.

But clearly there's something lacking

as far as romantic readers are concerned.

So what is it?

- Yeah, I think it's the
individualism of Jane

or indeed weathering heights.

The idea of the romantic
outside or the romantic rebel.

- Well, Austen's heroines
may not have been rebels,

but they still enjoyed
heartbreak and desire.

And where Bronte loves hysteria,

Austen prefers smiling irony.

- Dear, Mrs. Moreland,

consider the dreadful
nature of the suspicions

you have entertained.

What have you been judging from?

Remember the country and
the age in which we live?

Remember that we are English,

that we are Christians.

- 30 years earlier,

Austen mocked overheated Gothic fiction

in her novel, "Northanger Abbey".

You can feel her smirking

when her hero chides the heroine

for entertaining cliched,
fantasies about spooky houses,

locked rooms and dirty deeds.

- Consult your own understanding,

your own sense of the probable,

your own observation of
what is passing around you.

Dearest Mrs. Moreland,

what ideas have you been entertaining?

- In the decades after her death,

Austen was a background figure
in the literary landscape.

Outshone by the unbridled Brontes,

the medieval romances
of the Sir Walter Scott,

as well as the social panoramas

of Fackory, Gaskell and Dickens.

But by the middle of the 19th century,

Austen was back in print,

thanks to a new Victorian invention.

The advent of rail travel

re-engineered the shape of the nation

and the speed of life.

Quite unexpectedly, it also
created a captive new audience

for books!

In 1848, William Henry
Smith and Sons, WHSmiths,

opened their very first railway
bookshop, here at Euston.

So if you're off on your travels,

you could nip into the bookshop

and pick up a copy from
their railway library.

These very cheap and
often garrish editions

were known as yellow backs.

The inclusion of Austen
among the early yellow backs

on the shelves of Smiths

was largely due to the fact her titles

had recently fallen out of copyright.

Nevertheless, it was these
low price, popular editions,

which introduced Austen for the first time

to a mass audience.

- It is a truth
universally acknowledged

that a single man in
possession of a good fortune

must be in want of a woman.

- However little know,

the feelings or views of such a man,

may be on his first
entering a neighborhood.

- This mystery,
so well fixed in the minds

of the surrounding families.

- That he is considered

as the rightful property

of someone or other of their daughters.

- But the real turning point

in Austen's relationship

with her Victorian readers came in 1870,

when Jame's nephew,
James Edward Austen Lee,

took it upon himself to present

an authorized account of her life.

I went to meet Professor
Kathryn Sutherland

at the modest Hampshire cottage,

where Austen lived with
her mother and sister.

So, who is the Jane Austen, then,

that emerges from this first biography?

- Well, a surprisingly intimate picture

of Jane Austen emerges,

how she parceled out her time,

how she was the one in the family

who prepared breakfast
at nine in the morning.

She was also responsible
for keeping an eye

on the quantities of tea that they had

and just topping it up.

How she wrote in this room,

sitting at her desk over there and how,

this is where, of course,

mythology, perhaps begins
to enter the story.

How she was alerted to
any unwelcomed intruder

on her writing activities

by the creaking of this door as it opened

so she could hide away her manuscripts.

- I have to say that is one
of the most annoying anecdotes

in the whole of the
history of literary women.

This idea that, oh, the creaking door.

And then, oh, I'll hide away

'cause I'm a modest little woman.

She's described really in a way that fits,

I think, Victorian ideals of femininity,

like some sort of little
rein or spirits, you know,

and not seeking the, you
know, the glare of publicity.

And I dunno, it don't fit really

with all the sense of the
kind of intellectual breo

that you find in the-

- I think it doesn't fit
at all, but undoubtedly,

it does give us a myth

and a myth that remained
powerful for an extremely long.

- So presumably,
there's not very much

about the secret private
life of the bedroom

in the Austen Lee biography.

- No, I think we'd be hard pushed

to find secret private
lives of the bedroom

in any of Jane Austen's biographies.

That's a challenge for
biographers, isn't it?

But actually, as the way
this room is now presented

as part of the museum
of the shrine to Jane,

there are elements of the
Austen Lee myth in here.

For instance, he had the
dilemma of a portrait.

People want to see what
Jane Austen looked like.

All he had to work with
was this cartoon drawing

by Cassandra, sometime 1810, '11,

rather sardonic image.

- Yes, what a sort of mean little face.

- A mean, little face, indeed,

and sadly argued over what they should do.

And they decided they
would give it a make-over.

And so a portrait was
commissioned from that

to soften its features.

And interestingly, there was
quite a debate in the family

as to whether it looked like
Jane and they all agreed,

it had a kind of look of her,

but they wouldn't really
recognize her from it.

But on the other hand,
it was a pleasant face.

- Pleasant, but much
less intelligent looking.

- Less intelligent, a bit dopey.

- Yes, more confined
within a domestic image.

- Yes.

- And this became the frontest piece

of the first edition of the biography.

- So this is dear-
- This is, shortened.

- Exactly, this is the
Jane Austen of myth.

- As the end of the century approached,

an ardent army of Jane Austen fans

were swelling in numbers.

Then and now, the spiritual
home for these enthusiasts

was and remains the Georgian
resort city of Bath.

Today, the highlight of Bath's
annual Jane Austen festival

is a dashing regency parade,

a carnival of and millinery,

bonnets and britches.

And it's not just the ladies

who have a weakness for buckskin.

Are you the haberdasher?

- Well, I, madame, I'm the
Haberdasher's assistant,

for my wife's businessman, madame.

- So you sell all this stuff?

How'd you account for everybody
wanting to dress up so much?

- Well, I mean that is
a short, short question

with a big answer.

If you accept the 60 years
of Georgia III's right,

it was probably the greatest
epoch in British history

and the regency is the cream
on the top of the cake.

And so it attracts so many people.

- Did you make your own costumes

or did you buy them?

- This is my own.

And this is a Naval surgeon, 1806.

- Oh, is it?
- Oh yes, yeah.

- Do you think, that's what
a lot of the appeal is,

actually seeing clothes, the
costumes, the carriages, the-

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- The chandeliers.
- Yeah.

It's like age of elegance,
that's gone, I think.

And a lot of people look for it.

A lot of people are wishing they were back

to that standard of elegance.

- A hundred years ago,

there was a rather more serious
male interest in her books,

a sophisticated, and
highbrow clique of academics

and elites who call
themselves the Janeites.

For Janeites, like George Saintsbury,

the proper appreciation
of Austen's literature

was an exclusive and reverential pursuit.

- With Ms. Austen,

the myriad, trivial unforced strokes

build up the picture like magic.

Nothing is false.

Nothing is superfluous.

- Katie Halsey is
the author of a new book

on Jane Austen's readers.

And I met up with her in Bath

to find out who these
Janeites actually were.

- They're a sort of cozy
elites of Oxford dawns,

the literati, who are all really
interested in Jane Austen.

- They do seem quite
precious to me, the Janeites.

They say things like,

oh, I'd like to marry Elizabeth Bennett

and spend my life with her.

It was quite an odd thing
to say about a heroine.

- Yeah, it is.

But then that whole thing about wanting

to be a part of Jane Austen's life

is very much part of what the
Janeites are all about, too.

So they're interested

in falling in love with her characters,

knowing more about her characters,

being part of a world, I suppose,

that Jane Austen has created.

- So what was it that the
Janeites found in the books?

Is it the characters,
the style, the laughter?

Is it the wit?

Is it the architecture?

- I think it's probably

all of those things and more.

I mean, I think one of
the things they did find

was an idea of an England that had gone,

a secure world, a world that has rules,

however much those rules
may actually be subverted

and undercut in the novels.

So I think people saw
that stability in her.

- I think it's good to know

that there are all these
sort of male supporters

of Jane Austen throughout history,

because somehow the fact
that she is now seen

as such a kind of female
author with a female readership

has somehow undermined her status.

- Yes and I think it's important

for people to know that
Winston Churchill, for example,

read Jane Austen in the middle of the war.

And he said that she cured him.

Antibiotics and Jane Austen made me better

from a fever, he says.

- Another loyal Janeite was
the writer, Rudyard Kipling.

During the first World War,

the Kipling's lost their
only son in battle.

Rudyard assuaged their grief,

reading Austen aloud to
his wife and daughter.

He even went on to write a
short story called the Janeites

sat in the battlefields
of the Western front.

This is the man in gate, in HIPA,

the town, the Tommy's called wipers.

Thousands upon thousands of soldiers

from across the British empire

marched out into the
trenches through this gate.

In an act of commemoration,

a ceremony of remembrance takes place here

every single day of the year.

Trench warfare was a soul destroying mix

of intermittent terror
and numbing monotony.

The December, 1915 edition of
the War Illustrated reported,

we were caught unprepared
by the calama for books

that rose from the trenches
almost as soon as they were dug.

No matter what officer or man was asked,

if there was anything he wanted,

the answer was always the same.

Cigarettes and something to read.

But what sort of books
did the soldiers demand?

What he does not want
is fiction about war.

He likes tales of strong
domestic interest,

and it is worth noting that Jane Austen

has taken her fragrant way

into a surprising number of dugouts.

Among papers donated to
the Imperial War Museum,

there is a private memoir by an officer,

a teacher from Glasgow

by the name of William Boyd Henderson.

- Often and often,

during a long notch,

of a cold dotted job,

a lottie or a caterpillar,

I've been think kept in my spirits

by the thought of the book
in my kitbag waiting for me,

with what eagerness I have opened it

and being transported immediately

from the world of sergeant majors,

being out fighting and trench
digging and lolly cleaning

and caterpillar leasing to
a new world created for me

by adored, Jane Austen.

- I see myself lying
full length on the grass

as I finish a chapter of "Emma".

Till now that she was
threatened with its loss,

Emma had never known how
much of her happiness

depended on being first
with Mr. Knightley,

first in interest and affection.

Satisfied that it was so
and feeling it her due,

she had enjoyed it without reflection.

And only in the dread of being supplanted

found how inexpressibly
important it had been.

Face to face with industrialized
military slaughter,

soldiers could look
away into Austen's world

and be consoled.

In 1917, an intelligence
officer, Reginald Farrah,

managed to find time to mark the centenary

of Jane Austen's death
with a critical essay,

which redefined her achievement.

Farrah wrote, "Talk of
her limitations is vain.

"It must never be thought
that limitation of scene

"implies limitation of human emotion.

"Jane Austen's heroes and
heroines and subject matter

"are in fact, universal human nature.

He kills off stone dead,

the idea of two-ways spinsterish Jane

and says, really she
lives only in the novels

where she is a genius on
a par with Shakespeare,

important forever for the
brilliance of her realism.

So it lasts a hundred
years after her death.

She's finally made it
as a national author.

After the unimaginable
barbarity of World War,

the civilizing power of culture

seemed essential for
the future of mankind.

And in the universities,
the study of the humanities,

especially English
literature, expanded rapidly.

This newly popular discipline
demanded a scientific rigor,

be brought to the gentle
art of reading books.

In 1948, a controversial Cambridge-dom

wrote a book that transformed
Jane Austen's ranking

in the literary league tables.

F. R. Leavis was one
of the most opinionated

and influential critics of modern times.

And he was based here at Downing College.

Leavis formed the taste of
generations of graduates

from the 1930s, right
through to the 1960s.

In his bible entitled,
"The Great Tradition",

F. R. Leavis asserted
that there were only five,

truly great novelists writing in English.

And they were D.H. Lawrence,

Henry James, Joseph Conrad,

George Elliott, and then
the writer he declared,

the mother of the great
tradition, Jane Austen.

F.R. his wife, Queenie,

both taught the young Janet Todd,

when she was a student in
Cambridge, in the sixties.

- Right after the war.

and the I think that
the Leavis' both thought

that English literature was
going to save civilization

and we were to learn
it and get it correct.

And then we would go
out into the big world

and in a sense, preach the
doctrine of English literature.

So I think there was a
real didactic aim in it.

At the same time,

they despised didacticism in literature,

which is why they liked Jane Austen.

- Man Booker Prize
winner Howard Jacobson,

who rogueishly calls himself

the Jewish Jane Austen

was also a student of the Leavis'.

- He's was the words on the page, man.

That was the phrase,
the words on the page.

And that was why I went to him.

I was interested in the words on the page,

and that was why I'd got
to Jane Austen, myself,,

because of the words on the page.

Nothing extraneous.

Leavis said, Jane Austen,
is a serious of writer,

as you get, and the fact that
she is as funny as she is,

doesn't detract from the seriousness,

indeed contributes to the seriousness,

but these are serious,
serious novels as you get,

Leavis argues, about
society and about morality,

about the relation between
manners and morality.

And I had no difficulty
reading her that way, too,

when I got to Cambridge.

- So what are the qualities
that they really praise then,

in Jane Austen?

Because we have this,

if she's been praised in the 19th century

for her kind of homely virtue
and her domestic heroines,

and then she seems to be praised
in the early 20th century,

you know, for her wit.
- Hmm.

- Where is the moral force, then,

that Leavis would have loved in her?

- Well, I think it's a moral complexity,

that's what they like.

And it's not "Pride and
Prejudice", primarily.

It's "Mansfield Park".

And Queenie says that "Mansfield Park"

is the first modern novel.

- Alas, it
was almost Crawford's doing.

She had seen her influence in every speech

and was miserable.

The doubts and alarms
as to her own conduct,

which had previously distressed her in,

which had all slept
while she listened to him

will become of little consequence, now.

This deeper anxiety swallowed them up.

Things should take their course.

She cared not how it ended.

Her cousins might attack,
but could hardly tease her.

She was beyond their reach,

and if it lasts obliged
to yield, no matter.

It was all misery, now.

- "Mansfield Park", interestingly,

was probably the novel that
we did most at Cambridge,

that we thought most about at Cambridge.

It was the one that had
that air of being, you know,

a serious investigation

of the mores of that society.

- Frannie, we want your services.

- Yes, I'm here.

- Oh, don't leave your
seat, we don't want you now.

But for the plane.

You must be wife.

- No.

Indeed, you must excuse me.

I could not act for anything.

If you wanted to give me the world,

well indeed, I cannot.

- The tragedy just under
the surface of that world,

of high morals,

of how snobbery or a certain
kind of laxity here and there

could lead to the most
terrible consequences.

- I'm quite ashamed of you, Fannie,

to make such a difficulty
of obliging your cousins

in such a trifle,

so kind as they are to you?

Pick the pop with the good grace

and let us hear no more of it.

- Do not urge her madame.

It is not fair to urge her.

- I am not going to urge her.

But I shall think her a very
obstinate, ungrateful girl,

if she does not do what her
aunt and cousins wish her.

Ungrateful indeed, considering
who and what she is.

- While Jane Austen was being
read with a new seriousness

at the academic high table,

she was also settling down
with a new mass audience

in cinemas and sitting rooms
up and down the country.

- So what are you showing me now?

- This is 1967.

Yeah, this is a BBC costume
drama from the period.

- A young man, who is he?

- A young man of large fortune
from the north of England.

- It's Sunday tea time, here.

And this is important, I think,

because the classic
serial was for many years,

sort of a children's slot, really,

tea time drama on a Sunday night.

- It's news to me him being extremely rich

If he's flying from one place to another.

I begin to wonder
whether he'll be so great

an asset to our neighborhood...

- But this is going out at the same time

as the "The Forsyte Saga".
- Of course.

- BBC Two, later in the
evening for grownups.

So this is like the junior
version of "The Forsyte Saga".

- Without the sex, though.

- Without the sex, without the-

But even then, Austen is not kind of

really one of the major
writers for this kind of slot.

Still, the tea time classic serial

was very much the preserve
of Robert Louis Stevenson,

and Dickins-
- Oh, "Kidnapped".

- Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

So you would see "Kidnapped"
or "Oliver Twist"

or "St. Ives" or "Dom Busby"
or something like that.

- So here we are, 1980,
"Pride and Prejudice",

this is the first adaptation
that I remember vividly.

Is it a classier production?

- Much more so, it's much more expensive.

The lighting is much more complicated.

There's much more location filming in it.

The playing style is very different, too.

It's much less of a feeling
of being trapped inside

the quality street tin with this.

There's a subtlety to it.

There's an authenticity
to the costumes, too.

We're clearly in the
right period, you know?

- Is this on BBC One, BBC Two, what time?

- This is BBC Two and this is Sunday.

- So it's at nine o'clock.

- Hmm, yeah, I mean, we're in,

this is a slot that for a
decade or so at this point

has been associated with high-end,

thoughtful literary adaptation.

- So it's the
version then,

the heritage paint?

- Yeah, very much so, very much so.

Here he comes.
- Oh, marvelous.

- Standing around in this stupid manner.

- Dance with such company...

- Look at those
cheekbones, my words.

- So is the moment you
became an Austen scholar?

- I think it might be.

I do remember, we all had-

- Are you having an epiphany, now?

- We all had a bit of a
pash on David, look at that.

- Dancing with that.

- Oh, she's the most beautiful
creature I ever beheld.

- Austen seems to have
achieved the status now

of kind of heritage
entertainment for adults,

utterly kind of tasteful and restrained.

- Yes, the tone of these adaptations

has changed very dramatically.

It's risen from the status of
historical fun of some kind

to an object of veneration.

- And then it
seems to me that in 1995,

it all kind of goes ballistic, really.

- That's the moment she goes
from being BBC Two to BBC One,

from niche to mainstream.

She does seem to take on
a different kind of weight

in the world, really.

Maybe kind of the producers
finally know who she is.

- The big difference
in the 1995 adaptation

is famously how much sex Andrew Davis

kind of pumped back into that production.

- That is the moment when
that happens, isn't it?

We all know the image that's coming next.

- I know, and I can't bear it.

In 1995, the actor Colin Firth

emerged from the lake of Pemberley.

In his sopping wet linen shirts

and walked straight into female fantasy.

"Pride and Prejudice"
with added testosterone,

potent fuel that launched
a truly global brand.

Mr. Darcy?

- Mrs. Bennett.

- I did not expect to see you, sir.

We understood all the family were from who

or we would never have presumed.

- Excuse me.

- Over the last two decades,

thanks to both cinema and
Andrew Davis' sexy TV version

of regency gentility,

Jane Austen has leapt from classic author

into the realm of cult status.

Back in Texas, that same Andrew Davis

is the star turn at the Jane
Austen Society Convention.

- I have a very quick question.

Could you tell me why when
Elizabeth accepts Darcy,

that I don't see any
real emotion on his part

that he's really happy about it?

- Very good question.

And thank you very much for
pointing up the only bad about-

- Outside the hall,
I asked Andrew why he'd wanted

to adapt "Pride and
Prejudice" in the first place.

- I thought that all the previous
adaptations were so dumb,

completely missed the fact
that it's about sex and money.

And that the engine of
the plot is Darcy's desire

for Elizabeth.

And I wanted to emphasize the
physicality and the thing,

it's about young people with hormones.

So, lots and lots of galloping horses,

lots and lots of opportunity

for the audience to see the actors

with as many of their
clothes off and seen-

- I did notice that.

- Compatible with this-

- So you really developed, I think,

the character of Darcy, didn't you?

I mean, I, for me, it seems as
if you kind of made him more,

almost more like Mr. Rochester.

There's a bit of Bronte in your roster.

- I don't think I was changing
his character in the least,

from what Jane Austen did.

What I was doing was trying
to give the audience a chance

to see the story from his
point of view, as well as hers.

- But you did
something similar, I think,

in "Sense and Sensibility".

- Absolutely, I think Jane Austen,

missed a trick or two in "Sense
and Sensibility" because-

- You better not say that here.

- I am going to say it here

because the guys that get the girls

in "Sense and Sensibility"
on the face of it

are not worthy of them.

And so I thought, they
really needed butching up.

And so that's what I did.

- You added testosterone to it.

- Yes.

- What impact do you
think the adaptations have

on the readership of the books themselves?

- Well, I think there's been
a change in a lot of ways

because a lot of kids, a lot of students

come to the books through the adaptations

and while it's a good way to
get school kids in particular,

to read the books.

- So what's happening
to the Austen brand now?

Do you think her popularity
has peaked for a while?

- I think it might have peaked over here,

in the West at any rate.

I'm not sure whether
the we've heard enough

from the Chinese, from
the far East, in fact.

I don't know when,

because there's a huge enthusiasm
for Jane Austen in Japan

and increasingly in China, as well.

- So, we've had Southern California,

Bollywood and next stop, China.

- Well, that's my bet.

- So what is it in Austen's prose

that has allowed her to
be both so freely adapted

and so widely read?

I think there is a clue to her magic

in the Hampshire village,
where she was born.

One of the most surprising
things about Jane Austen

is just how very little we know about her.

This is the site of the Vic Ridge,

where she was born and spent
a large part of her life.

It's all nettles and cow paths today.

So you have to use your
imagination to fill in the blanks,

which is just what Jane
Austen trusted her readers

to be able to do.

Open any of Austen's novels

and you won't get bogged
down in descriptive details.

For example, all we are ever really told

about Willoughby or Darcy's looks

is that they are uncommonly handsome.

Austen leaves room for
the reader's intelligence

and fantasies, which
has the uncanny effect

of allowing each new generation

to see themselves reflected
back from her pages.

I think it's her spare
restrained style of writing

that has also allowed Austen
to be so widely reinvented

and ultimately, popularized.

I bet Austen satirical pen would have got

to work on this eccentric
convention thrown in her honor,

but for the 600 delegates,

having fun living the Jane
Austen life for a weekend,

this is all an attempt
to unlock the fiction

they love so much.

Sheryl Kinney is a doctor from Dallas

and chair of this year's event.

What I've been struck by

is just incredible intellectual
firepower got here.

I mean, you're a gynecologist.

There's judges, teachers, journalists,

but ordinary readers and
fans all mixing together.

- And that's the wonderful
thing about Jane Austen

that you can enjoy her on so many levels.

You can just enjoy the films.

You can know the books verbatim
and we embrace everyone.

And that's what's so much fun.

- You're working hard to dispel

any kind of old fashioned
chintzy view of Jane Austen?

- Well, absolutely.

And this year we worked very hard on that.

One of our sponsors provided
us with black lace panties.

- Oh my word.
- Yes.

And in each bag was a
note from John Willoughby

that said to call him.

- Call me XO, XO, Willoughby.

- Yes.
- What does he say?

- Well, when you call him on the phone,

it says, hi, I'm John.

This is John Willoughby.

And I'm not available this weekend.

Come to New York in 2012
for sex, power and money,

which is the next conference.

- But also, you have all this other stuff.

Team Willoughby.

I'm amazed that a gynecologist
would support Willoughby.

- Yes, well, as I said,

unless I'm trying to make money

from sexually transmitted diseases, so.

Oh, that just slipped out.

- This gathering of readers
displays a defining aspect

of Austen's long lasting power.

Plenty of men love Austen.

But from the outset,

these books by a woman, about women,

always created a sense of female community

from the ladies of all Thorpe onwards

and amongst this extremely diverse group,

I think the main attraction is still

that strong sense of sisterhood.

I'm really moved by the
warmth of the community

of fans, scholars, and readers

all united by their love for Jane Austen.

But perhaps, that's actually,

what's unique about Austen as a writer.

She seems to have pulled off

what seems an impossible
combination of academic prestige

and popular devotion.

- To Jane.

- Very good.

Oh.