WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Jane Austen 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.600 Hey, we know we have some dedicated listeners who've been 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:08.320 with the show from day one or have taken the plunge, 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:10.600 gone all the way through the back catalog, listen to 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.400 all nine hundred plus episodes in the archive. Huge shout 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.200 out to those folks. That is a commitment. But we 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:20.400 also know that we have lots of new listeners who 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.680 haven't heard some of our older material. So to welcome 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.080 them and introduce them to some of our our older stuff, 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:28.760 We're gonna try something new on Saturday's. We're going to 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.240 re air some of our favorites from the past. To 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:33.880 kick it off, we have our Jane Austin episode, which 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.920 originally aired March and aside for being a personal favorite 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.360 of mine because I love her, she's the one that 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:42.960 was requested again and again, and she had even been 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.000 on the wish list for these shows prior hosts before 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:53.200 we even came on board. Welcome to Stuff You Missed 0:00:53.200 --> 0:01:03.560 in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.840 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.160 I'm Holly Fry and we're just gonna get two things 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.000 out in the open. At the beginning of this episode, 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.240 Thing number one. Jane Austen was not just a shy 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.640 spinster who wrote some little books mostly to amuse herself 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.000 and her own family. That's a common rumor. It's a 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:26.240 common rumor that is false. Another common maybe not rumor, 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.680 but another perception that is false. She was not like 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:35.640 the real life version of Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Yeah, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.160 and I think that dovetails on the rumor, like people 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:40.760 think that her books were some sort of personal wish 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:45.120 fulfillment scenario, yeah, or sort of a fictionalization of her 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:50.080 own life, and they really were not. There. There's some 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:52.880 little things that you will read and Jane Austen books 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.520 that do have a little tie into her own life, 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.960 but for the most part, these were very, very definitely 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:03.160 fictional books from her imagination, not from real things that 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.640 had happened to her. Um. She is one of our 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.720 most requested writers, for sure, lots of people asking us 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:12.800 to talk about Jane Austen. So we're going to do 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:17.280 that today, talk about her not at all Jane Austen 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:22.960 novel like life, um, starting of course at the beginning. Yeah, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.920 it was completely unlike any of the heroines in her books, 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:30.120 just not the same as her fictional world now. She 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:34.320 was born on December sixteenth, seventeen seventy five and Steventon, Hampshire, 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.480 and she was the seventh child and second daughter of 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:41.600 George Austen, who was an Anglican rector, and his wife Cassandra. 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.720 And she was christened the following April five and she 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:46.640 spent a little more than a year after that in 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.520 the care of another family in the village. She was 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.160 close enough that her parents could visit and for her 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.440 to be brought to the parsonage to visit as well, 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.000 and Jane went to live at home again once she 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.240 was a toddler. All of the Austin children at scept 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.960 for her brother George, who had uh some kind of 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.240 developmental disability, followed the same pattern like this was their 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:08.639 family practice, to send the children away and then bring 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.160 them back. It was an extremely successful practice. All of 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:17.359 the Austin children lived into adulthood, which is not common 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:19.080 at the time and not common at the time at 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:24.359 all um uh And by all accounts they were an 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.440 exceptionally modest family. I mean, it's eight children in the 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:31.560 end being raised on a rector's salary, which was not 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.400 a lot of money, but they were exceptionally intelligent and literate. 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:38.640 Jane and her siblings and the many many cousins and 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:40.720 friends who would come to visit them and stay for 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:43.360 a while. We're also really creative and they like to 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.200 do things like put on plays together, and they made 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.560 extensive use of their father's five hundred volume library, which 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.840 is really where Jane cut her teeth on the world 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.240 of language. And if you've read any novel by Jane Austen, 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.600 or even seen any adaptation for film or television or 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.240 the screen, mean, you've probably picked up on the theme 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:04.600 that being smart and articulate can make up for not 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.760 inheriting a fortune. And this really was one of the 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:12.120 Jane Austen's family family's values, having been written down in 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.240 almost those precise words by her father's grandmother long before 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.279 Jane was even born, that you can make something of 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.799 yourself even if you didn't inherit tons of money when 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.320 Jane was a child. This is to me where things 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.840 really diverge. If you are a fan of Jane Austen, 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.640 like they're they're definitely interesting male characters, but the focus 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.479 is really on the women and the women's lives and 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.839 the sort of the other women and the other sisters 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:44.280 and the cousins and the moms, and yeah, I think 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.280 most people think of her, uh and in some ways 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:51.400 as like a women's writer, really writing a lot about women, 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.680 a lot for women. But she grew up in a 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.400 house full of boys. She didn't really have that much 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.279 exposure to huge groups of women. I would even call 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.520 this upbringing overrun with boys. I mean she had she 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:07.919 had all of those brothers, you know, she was just 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.160 her and one of her sister, all of these brothers. 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.240 Her mother and father ran a boys school out of 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.160 their home to try to you know, make ends meet, 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.440 and so um, you know, Jane and her sister would 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:22.560 share a room and all the other bedrooms were full 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.360 of all these boys, and her father taught her brothers 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.880 and all of these other male children. And so she 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.720 lived in this like very rowdy, noisy, boyish environment and 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:35.799 kind of what we would think of as a tomboy 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.880 kind of sense um until she was seven and went 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.760 away to boarding school with her sister Cassandra, and their 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.600 cousin named Jane Cooper went to the same school as well. 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.320 So from the toddler ages that she came back from 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.160 being with a wet nurse in the village until the 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:52.400 age of seven. Uh, noisy boy time all over the 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.200 place in Jane Austen's world. It stresses me out just 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.400 thinking about it. I kind of love it, many people do. 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.400 I'm not great with the loud children noises well, and 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.280 the thing that it reminds me of on on my 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.160 mom's side of the family, UM, I have there were 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:13.559 eleven children total in my generation, um, and only three 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:18.719 of us were girls, so kind of a similar proportion, um. 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:22.280 And I like, I remember like the boy footsteps thundering 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.640 up and down the stairs, and I kind of imagined 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:29.599 that it was a little bit similar growing up growing 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.200 up in this many many boys and and uh boys 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.200 that she was related to, and ones who were brought 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.320 into study at the school. While I'm like this is stressful, 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:46.560 like hey, noisy fun time, but girls schools at this 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.240 point in history tended to be fairly meager and indifferent. 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:52.279 And it seems that the school that Jane went to 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.320 was really better than most. But while they are all 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:58.840 three of the girls got sick with what was probably typhus. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.320 They did recover, but Jane Cooper's mother caught the illness 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.200 while nursing her back to health, and unfortunately she ultimately 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.200 died from it. Now, once they were all well, they 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.160 all spent another year at home, with Jane Cooper often 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.920 being there as well since her mother had died, and 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.600 they eventually all went off to another boarding school what 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.000 they only stayed for about a year before coming home 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.200 again for good and being taught at home. Jane's first 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.520 and perhaps only love was Thomas Langlois la Foy, and 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:32.240 she met him in when he was visiting for the holidays. Well, 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.000 they fell in love and were obvious enough about it 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.559 that it drew some attention, and soon enough his kids 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.520 sent him home again, either to protect Jane from him 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.680 or to protect him from Jane. Basically, people did not 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.480 want them together. It worked out fine for Thomas, who 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:50.880 married an heiress, but afterwards Jane really had little in 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.480 the way of suitors for a very long time. Yeah. 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.640 She he definitely got the longer end of the stick 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.640 on that whole breakup. Yeah, So let's talk about Jane 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.520 the grown up. She was not the only writer in 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.400 her family. Her mother panned little poems for the children 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:11.160 and for the students at the school. Jane's oldest brother, James, 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.800 was also a writer and a poet, and in January 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.800 of seventeen eighty nine he actually started his own magazine, 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.000 which was called The Loiterer and it ran for fourteen months. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.520 And Jane's first written works were satires. One was called 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:28.720 Love and Friendship, which satirized romances, and a historical satire 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.679 called History of England. When she was around nineteen years old, 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.760 she wrote an epistolary novel which, uh, on the off 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:38.160 chance you don't know what that means, it means the 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:40.920 novel that's written as a series of letters, and it 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.800 was called Eleanor and mary Anne, which would later become 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:49.200 Sense and Sensibility. Jane's parents stopped teaching in seventeen ninety six, 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.720 when Jane was twenty, so at this point the house 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.920 became a lot quieter. Uh. That year she started working 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.599 on First Impressions, which would later become Pride and Prejudice, 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.840 and about a year later she started rewriting Eleanor and 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.760 mary Anne, changing it from this series of letters into 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.360 a more linear narrative. She also wrote her first draft 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:15.199 of Northanger Abbey, which was originally called Susan between sev seventine, 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.440 so she basically banged out the bulk of three novels 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:23.119 in as many years, super productive. I'm kind of imagining 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.000 now that it was not quite so reality in the 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.520 house and she had a little headspace to herself. She 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.280 was like, let's write some books for real now. Jane's 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:33.800 family played a huge part in the process of her 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.319 writing and her rewriting of these books. In the evenings, 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.320 she would read her work aloud to Cassandra and her parents, 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.160 testing out her writing on the family, and she would 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.440 make notes to herself of what what worked and what 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:49.160 they responded to and what really needed to be revised. 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:53.960 Her father liked first Impressions so much that he wrote 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:55.800 to a publisher to ask how much it would cost 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:58.960 him to publish it at the family's expense. Uh. He 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:03.439 got this inquiry almost immediately marked declined by return of post, 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.640 and Jane got to work rewriting the book again. I actually, 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.800 I really like this about Jane's fother like he could 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:12.679 have been like, no, this is not a seemly thing 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.240 for you to be doing. Novels were not really respected 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:19.199 as a form of literature at this point in history, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.400 and for a woman to be writing novels there were 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.680 other women novelists, but it was still kind of a 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:30.559 groundbreaking thing, and not a lot of published women novelists 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.599 in particulars. This is not a career women aspired to know, 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.640 and people generally thought that poetry and plays were a 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.760 much higher genre of literature than novels, where novels were 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.760 kind of trashy and scandalous. So um, the fact that 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.079 he supported her in all of this, I really like, Yeah, 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:53.080 it's always, uh, sort of refreshing and heartwarming when you 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.800 hear about things like that kind of step outside the 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.640 boundaries of society's rules in an effort to sort of, 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.240 you know, nurse along and nurture somebody's creative spirit. Yeah. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.640 The Austin's pretty much encouraged all their kids too, to 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.559 do what they wanted to do and to pursue their 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:14.079 own path in life. So a little bit of an exception. 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.560 And in the midst of all of this writing and rewriting, Uh, 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.320 an event happened that didn't happen directly to Jane, but 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:23.080 it did really dramatically influence how she lived the rest 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.240 of her life. Cassandra was engaged to a man named 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:29.280 Thomas Fowl, and Tom had gone abroad to try to 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.800 make enough money to afford to marry, and he and 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.120 Cassandra were supposed to get married around Easter of seventeen 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:39.000 nine seven, but he had not come home and the 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:43.000 wedding was postponed until spring, only for Cassandra to find 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:45.720 out many months after the fact that he had actually 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.160 died of yellow fever while he was away in February. Yeah, 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.680 he he had already passed away when their wedding was 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.640 supposed to have transpired, but it took so long for 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:56.920 news to get anywhere at this point that that she 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.400 didn't know until much later. He did leave her money 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.960 in his will, not enough to make her totally independent, 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:08.360 but she wasn't completely destitute, and she effectively considered herself 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.920 to be a widow at this point. She and Jane 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:14.679 had always been extremely close, but from here on out 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.800 they basically were one another's primary companions, and a couple 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:22.120 of years later there was another dramatic change in Jane's life. 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.360 She returned from visiting friends to learn that her parents 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.160 were moving to Bath and turning over the parsonage to 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:32.040 her brother James and his family. So Jane and Cassandra 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:34.520 were still mostly dependent on their parents at this point, 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:36.079 so that meant that they were going to be moving 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:40.600 to So Cassandra destroyed all of the letters that Jane 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.040 wrote to her about this, and that's something that she 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.120 she did with basically, any letter that Jane wrote her 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.440 that was extremely personal was destroyed. So we can kind 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.000 of glean from that that Jane was pretty upset by 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:58.360 this development. Stevenson was her home and she had, you know, 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.000 lived there for whole her whole life, and she and 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.000 her sister had to kind of watch as its furnishings 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.840 were divided up among their brothers. The books and the 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.840 and their father's beloved library were all sold off. The 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.559 place that had been their home was now their brother's 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.680 home and not theirs anymore. So it kind of shook 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:21.079 the foundations of of Jane's world a little bit well, 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.880 and her new location added to that because Bath was 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.079 much more urban than Steventon had been, and there were 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.880 also many more social demands, and Jane's parents had actually 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.600 met in Bath when they were about her age, so 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.439 she sort of had this feeling that it was on 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:39.880 her to do list when they moved there to find 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:44.360 a husband. Scholars don't completely agree about how this move 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.480 affected her writing. There are some who use the lack 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.880 of letters and new manuscripts and new novels written in 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.359 Bath as evidence that the whole thing was so distressing 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:55.960 that Jane just couldn't write. But there are others who 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.640 insist that she had always been writing and she wouldn't 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:01.439 let she wouldn't have let moving stop her, so that 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.559 they theorized more that she was like rewriting. It was 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:08.800 a revision period rather than a new work period. Um, 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:11.640 but we don't know for sure. I don't know for sure, 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.600 And regardless, there's a pretty big gap in her writing 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.280 output at this point. Yeah, at least in terms of 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.120 new content, we weren't seeing anything. We don't have tons, 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.080 unlike that three years where she was just like streaming. 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.800 Here are my three new books that didn't really happen 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.520 while she was in Bath. Her biggest life of him 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:33.120 during the Bath years actually happened back in Hampshire, when 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.560 Jane and Cassandra went to visit their friends, the Big 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:40.360 Sisters in December of eighteen o two. Their brother Harris Big, 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.720 asked Jane to marry him while she was there. They 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.240 had known each other since they were very young and 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:51.280 Jane accepted his proposal, but their engagement only lasted one night. 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.360 It's possible that being in the BIG's house, where she 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.200 and Tom mcfroy had spent time in one another's company, 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:01.560 sort of stirred up old memories of a more passionate relationship, 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:04.360 and whatever the reasons, in the morning, Jane called the 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.760 engagement off as gently as she could, and she and Cassandra, 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:11.920 who had planned to stay for several weeks, asked to 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.480 be taken home immediately. Yeah, I can imagine the awkwardness 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:17.120 of yes, I will marry you, and in the morning 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:22.680 going not so much, Yes, I'm gonna go now. Well, 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.840 and as with Tom, this all worked out fine for Harris. 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.000 He got married to someone else two years later and 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.920 they had ten children. Uh. Fortunately, it also does not 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.000 seem to have soured Jane's relationship with with the rest 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.160 of the Big family. They were still friends after that, 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.560 even though they had She had had this extremely awkward, 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:45.960 less than twenty four hour engagement to their brother was 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.680 kind of funny, uh, And her one night engagement to 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.520 Harris Big seems to have kicked started Jane's desire to 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.760 write again and actually get her work published. After all, 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:58.000 if she did not get married, she was gonna have 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:01.120 to find a way to manage once her parents passed away. Yeah, 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.800 this was the reality of being a woman at this point. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:06.960 If you did not have money, either from your family 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.720 or from your husband, then you did not have money. 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:13.840 That was how it worked. Jane's brother, Henry, became her 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.000 literary agent, and he also got the help of a 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.480 lawyer named William Seymour. The first book that they turned 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.880 their eye to was Northinger Abbey, which at the time, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.800 as we said earlier, was called Susan. They sold it 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.040 to a London publisher named Richard Crosby for ten pounds, 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.440 and although he advertised the book, he never actually did 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.680 anything with it. And Jane also started on a new book, 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:37.560 one that she never finished and had more direct parallels 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.640 to her own life than any of her other books. 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:42.400 It was called The Watsons and it was about four 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.720 impoverished daughters trying to find husbands before their father died. 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.320 She planned to kill off the father in the book, 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.640 but then her own father died in January of eighteen 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:55.000 o five after a brief and sudden illness. One of 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.400 the saddest parts of that part of the story is 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.560 that it fell to Jane to write to her brother 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.440 Frank about their father's death, and after she had written 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:07.040 and sent that letter, her sister got another letter from 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.600 him that revealed that his ship was in Portsmouth, and 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:11.600 that was not where the first letter had been sent, 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.960 so Jane had to do that all over again. Kind 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:20.200 of makes your heart hurt. Her father had never had 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.840 much money, but his death meant that Jane and Cassandra 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:27.320 and their mother were basically completely penniless. They had to 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.760 move into smaller lodgings immediately. James Henry and Frank Austin 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:34.520 each offered to give them fifty pounds a year to 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.440 help make ends meet, and Frank, who was the most 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.280 well off, had originally offered a hundred pounds, but Jane's 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.280 mother would only accept half of that amount. So at 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:45.920 this point, Jane's mother had a little bit of money 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.600 of her own, Cassandra had inherited a little bit from 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.600 her deceased fiance. Jane, more than anyone else, was just 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:58.280 completely dependent on other people's generosity for every penny she had. 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.639 And on top of that, brothers, while you know they 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.160 seem to have had good intentions about wanting to look 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.920 after their mother and their sisters, but they kind of 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.080 just took for granted that whatever arrangements they made were 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.760 going to be okay with her. Um. They would make, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.160 you know, arrangements for getting the women from one place 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.200 to another without consulting them first, and then Jane would 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.920 sort of be like, actually, I am I have plans 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.120 to be in this place with these people at that time, UM, 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.720 it was just sort of awkward. They all of their 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:35.280 moving around had to happen at the convenience of other people. Um. 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.359 And so for about a year they did. They moved 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.720 around a whole lot, and it mainly had to live 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:46.200 off the generosity of others. I can imagine that being 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.600 incredibly stressful. I do not like that idea much at all, 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.840 and no like my independent spirit just like feels all 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.480 trapped thinking about it. Uh. In eighteen oh six, Frank, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.600 who was in the Navy, suggested that the Austin Ladies 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:02.280 actually share a home with his wife to be because 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:04.280 he would be at sea a lot, and so they 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.679 lived together in Southampton for about three years. Then in 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.440 eighteen o nine they made the move to Jane's most 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.240 famous home, Chotton cottage. And before we talk about what 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.239 happened there, let's take a moment for a word from 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:25.159 our sponsor, back to the the home where Jane Austen 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:27.719 got most of her work that was published during her 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:32.399 lifetime completed and published. Chotten Cottage was part of Edward 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.600 Austin's estate and he offered it to the Austin Ladies 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.640 when it's tenant died, so Jane, Cassandra, and their mother 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.399 all moved there, along with a sister in law in 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.560 eighteen o nine. And that same year Jane wrote to 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:48.120 Richard Crosby, the publisher who had bought Susan, asking when 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.840 he might publish it. Uh. He said he didn't plan 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:52.800 to do anything with it, and offered to sell it 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:54.960 back to her for ten pounds, which of course she 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.520 did not have. I have I have an audio book 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.080 that is a collection of some of the letters to 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:06.719 and from Jane Austen Um And after reading the response 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:09.560 to this letter, there's a sound effect of her just 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:14.600 like crumpling up the paper. Um Like ten pounds does 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.159 not sound like a lot. But she did not have 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:19.560 the money to buy it back, and the publisher was 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.400 just not going to do anything with it um. Once 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.080 they were in this cottage, the four women lived a 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.520 pretty quiet life. Jane and Cassandra shared a bedroom, and 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:30.639 Jane would get up first and play the piano for 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.639 a while and then make breakfast for everyone. And she 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.160 was otherwise exempt from most of the other household duties 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.160 as long as Martha, the sister in law, and Cassandra 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.560 were there to do them, and so she spent most 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.600 of her time writing. The first book that Henry was 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.840 able to find a publisher for was Sense and Sensibility, 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.320 and it was published in eighteen tens through Military Library 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:56.480 Whitehall at Henry's expense. Its author was simply listed as 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:00.840 a lady. A lady wrote Sense and Sensibility. The lady 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:03.439 wrote it. Uh. It came out at the end of 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.359 eighteen eleven, and its first run had sold out by 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.959 eighteen thirteen. Jane made a hundred and forty pounds on it, 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.439 which gave her a little independence. I mean, it was 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:14.639 not enough money to to totally live off of, but 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.760 she was no longer one percent dependent on other people. 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:20.879 She could at least go by postage or plan, you know, 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.040 a trip to visit a friend without having to ask 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.239 other people for many on. Thomas Edgerton, the publisher at 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.439 Military Library, was ready for another book before the printing 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:33.080 sold out, so she sold him Pride and Prejudice for 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.960 a hundred and ten pounds. Her name still did not 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.520 appear on the book. It was simply printed as being 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.960 by the author of Sense and Sensibility, and her identity 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:44.359 of the author as the author was mostly kept secret 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:49.119 outside the immediate family for years, so nobody knew that 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:53.359 she was writing these bestselling novels. The next book, and 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.480 another sold out print run, was Mansfield Park, and after 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.320 that came Emma, which she worked on between January eighteen 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:04.240 fourteen in March eighteen fifteen, and very gradually a few 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:07.480 people outside the immediate family started to learn that Jane 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.360 was the person writing all these books. And for reasons 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.159 that aren't entirely clear, uh Edgerton was not interested in 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.160