Austen Chat – Details, episodes & analysis

Join us for a chat with noted Austen scholar Kathryn Sutherland about Jane Austen’s surviving manuscripts and what they reveal about her writing process and creative confidence. Kathryn also shares the story behind the ambitious digital project that brought Austen’s scattered manuscripts together in a virtual archive and talks about some of the material objects she included in her book Jane Austen in 41 Objects—reflecting on how tangible artifacts can bring us closer to the writer we think we know.

Kathryn Sutherland is Professor Emerita and a Senior Research Fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author Jane Austen's Textual Lives (2005), Why Modern Manuscripts Matter (2022), and Jane Austen in 41 Objects (2025). She is also the editor of many editions of Austen's works through Oxford World's Classics, including Teenage Writings (with Freya Johnston, 2017). Sutherland was also the Project Director and Principal Investigator for Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, a website that houses the digitized files of all Jane Austen's known fiction manuscripts. She is a patron of Jane Austen's House in Chawton, a trustee of Friends of the Nations' Libraries, and a trustee of the British Library Collections Trust.

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep29/.

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Bath bun. Bobbinet. Poor basket. Vanity-bait. These are just a few of the words the Oxford English Dictionary credits Jane Austen with using for the first time in print—and almost all are words related to domestic and everyday life. In this episode, we sit down with scholar Charlotte Brewer to explore the Dictionary’s 19th-century origins, its reliance on volunteer readers, its ongoing digital evolution, and the literary biases that shaped whose words were recorded. A must-listen for word nerds! 

Charlotte Brewer is Emerita Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She began her career as a medievalist, subsequently turning to the history of the English language and in particular its record in the Oxford English Dictionary. Her publications include studies of Jane Austen and Shakespeare in the OED, and she is currently working on the Murray Scriptorium, a co-edited edition of the letters of James Murray, the first chief editor of the OED.

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep28/.

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Happy 2025! This year marks Jane Austen's 250th birthday, and we are delighted to kick off the celebration with professor and author John Mullan as our guest. This month we delve into passages from the four novels published during Austen's lifetime and discuss what the details reveal about her genius as a writer. Join us for this fascinating and insightful episode (and get a sneak peek at one of our plenary speakers for JASNA's 2025 AGM in Baltimore)!

John Mullan is Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at University College London. Specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth century literature, he is a frequent guest on radio and TV and lectures widely. He also writes on contemporary fiction for the Guardian and was a judge for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. John is the author of The Artful Dickens, What Matters in Jane Austen?, Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature, and How Novels Work and has edited the Oxford World Classics editions of Sense and Sensibility and Emma as well as a number of works by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep19.

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In this episode we chat with the man who gave us the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice—for many, the definitive Austen adaptation. A prolific author and screenwriter, Andrew Davies is also responsible for the 1996 ITV adaptation of Emma, Northanger Abbey (2007), Sense and Sensibility (2008), and the recent dramatization of Sanditon—not to mention adaptations of a host of other classic novels. Join us as we discuss Andrew's thoughts on adapting Austen's novels to film and, of course, Mr. Darcy in a wet shirt.

Andrew Davies, prominent author and screenwriter, began his career writing radio plays and eventually moved into writing for television, film, and theater. He is also the author of several novels and children’s books. In addition to the screen adaptations of Austen's novels mentioned above, he has dramatized television series such as Bleak House, House of Cards (ITV), Mr. Selfridge, Little Dorrit, To Serve Them All My Days, Vanity Fair, and War & Peace, in addition to films such as Bridget Jones's Diary, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Andrew's work has garnered dozens of nominations and awards, and in 2002, he received the highest honor bestowed by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, a BAFTA Fellowship, in recognition of his “outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image.” 

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep18.

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Lord Byron is one of the most notorious bad boys of English literature. He had countless affairs, drank wine from a cup fashioned from a human skull, kept a pet bear at Cambridge, and fought for Greek independence against the Ottoman Empire.  What could this Regency-era demigod of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” possibly have to do with spinster Jane, a country parson's daughter? More than you'd think, according to our guest, Christine Kenyon Jones. In this episode we discuss the parallels between Austen and Byron, Austen's references to Byron in her novels and letters, and how each may have influenced the other's work.

Dr. Christine Kenyon Jones is a Research Fellow at King's College London, focusing on the Romantic and Regency periods. Her books include Jane Austen and Lord Byron: Regency Relations (2024) and Dangerous to Show: Lord Byron and His Portraits (2020). She has also authored several essays published in Persuasions and Persuasions On-line.

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep17.

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Thanks to the tireless work of translators, readers around the world can enjoy Jane Austen's works in their native languages. But how does one even begin to translate her carefully crafted sentences? What unforeseen challenges and valuable insights arise in the process? In this episode, we ask Austen translators Keiko Parker and Maria Biajoli about their experiences—the good, the bad, and the je ne sais quoi.

Keiko Parker has been a JASNA member since 1981 and coordinated the 2007 Annual General Meeting in Vancouver. She has translated five Austen novels into Japanese—Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility—and is currently working on Northanger Abbey. She has also been a breakout speaker at several AGMs and has published papers in Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line. 

Maria Biajoli is a professor of English at Federal University of Alfenas, Brazil, where she teaches English language and English literature, focusing on women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has presented at a number of JASNA's AGMs, including in 2023 in Denver, where she talked about translating Pride and Prejudice into Brazilian Portuguese. She has published papers about Austen in Persuasions, Persuasions On-Line, and other academic journals.

For a transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep16.

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Cassandra Austen, beloved sister to Jane, was a talented artist in her own right. At age 19, she illustrated Jane's satirical History of England with thirteen delightful ink-and-watercolor portraits. She continued to draw and paint throughout her life, most often copying from popular newspaper and magazine prints of the day. In this episode, Austen scholar Janine Barchas discusses her recent discovery of previously unidentified works by Cassandra and the underappreciated "art of copying," a talent Jane Austen gave her heroine Elinor Dashwood. Excitingly, there may still be pieces of Cassandra’s work out there, waiting to be discovered by you, the listener!

Images of Cassandra's drawings discussed in this episode are included in the transcript on our website:  https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep15.

A video version of this episode is also available on our YouTube Channel:
https://youtu.be/AzPfNIDt-6U

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Jane Austen pioneered and perfected quite a few literary techniques, and her novels mark a major turning point in modern English fiction. In this episode we chat with Collins Hemingway about Austen’s development as a writer and unpack the tools in her literary toolbox. Drawing on insights from his book Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction: Six Novels in “a Style Entirely New,” Collins shares his thoughts on her creative process, what she learned from novel to novel, and her mastery of innovative literary techniques.

For a transcript, show notes, and guest bio: https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep14

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It's Austen Chat's one-year anniversary!

Encouraging more people to read Jane Austen and gain a deeper understanding of her works and life is JASNA’s mission, and to celebrate our podcast birthday, we welcome not one but three guests to talk about reading Austen and the online event they organize each year: Jane Austen July.

BookTubers Katie Lumsden, host of the YouTube channel Books and Things, Marissa Schwartz, host of Blatantly Bookish, and Claudia Falcone, host of Spinster’s Library, are dedicated Janeites, which is why, for the past six years, they have been spearheading a month-long reading challenge all about Jane Austen. Every July, thousands of readers across the internet join them to read Jane Austen and Austen-related books, watch Austen adaptations, and discuss their experiences.

For a transcript, show notes, and guest bio: https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep13

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"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." —Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey

As an avid reader and a novelist herself, Jane Austen of course loved to read novels. But what else did she read, and what influence did it have on her writing? What books did she place in the hands of her characters, and what do their reading habits and choices say about them? Drawing from her forthcoming book, What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why), Professor Emerita Susan Allen Ford joins us in this episode to answer these questions and more. Susan is the editor of JASNA’s journals, Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line.

For a transcript, show notes, and guest bio:  https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep12

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