This month the History Girls have a Jane Austen theme so when it came to considering what to put into the Cabinet of Curiosities, it seemed only appropriate to bring my own little piece of Jane Austen with me – my copies of her novels.
I’m not one of those people who go on constantly about how wonderful printed books are over and above e-books: I love my Kindle, and with good reason (holidays, it turns out, are much more fun when you aren’t lugging 10 paperbacks around. Hating what you’re reading on a 4-hour train journey? Not a problem!)
However my Jane Austen novels are special to me.
They were given to me by my grandparents. I was a bookish teenager and had actually read Austen previously – my mum’s copies, when I was about 12 – and just hadn’t got her. Too much sitting around talking, not enough stuff happening (I know, I know – all I can say is that I was young.) So I said ‘thank you’ politely and wondered what on earth I was supposed to do with a set of books which a) we already had in the house and b) I knew I didn’t like (even though they were Classics).
Then came that adaptation in the mid-90s and I realised that, wet shirts aside, Jane Austen was funny. Really, really funny. And sad and clever and romantic and wonderfully, wonderfully human. So I was off, re-reading the lot within weeks and falling irrevocably in love with her characters, her plots and her writing. And I read my own copies. Here they are:
They’re unlike any books I owned at the time.
They were obviously old – not ancient, but definitely not new (I can’t recall where my grandparents said they’d got them, sadly.) The title page informs me that they are part of ‘Collins Library of Classics’, although they contain no date of printing. A quick online skim says that they were published between 1903 and 1945, probably in the 1930s.
For another thing, they were small, much smaller than a standard paperback (6 x 4 inches rather than approx. 7.5 x 5), red-bound with gold lettering on the spine. The pages were made of much thinner paper than I was used to handling and each included a picture opposite the frontispiece. And they had that proper old-book smell.
So having started by saying I love my Kindle – and I do – it is also right that reading Jane Austen is still a very different experience for me when I pick up my little red copies. I do have e-copies (and audiobooks too) and they are wonderful novels in whatever format I choose. But when I read them in their physical form, they look, smell and feel as they did that (second) time I read Jane Austen: they are excitement, discovery and emotion made real. And that’s what books should do, surely?
“Walter Scott has no business writing novels, especially good ones – it is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.”
Jane Austen from original family picture. Getty
Author feuds: we at the History Girls are above such things but they are horribly common. Gore Vidal comparing Norman Mailer to Charles Manson; Vidal retaliating by punching and then headbutting him. HG Wells calling Henry James a 'painful hippopotamus' before engaging in a rather nasty letter-writing battle. Ernest Hemingway dismissing F.Scott FitzGerald as a sissy, a moaner and a drunk. No one comes out well and it's not just the men who know how to sharpen a quill: the above 'attack' on Walter Scott was penned by our own mistress of manners, Jane Austen.
Now I'll be honest here, I'm not the world's greatest Austen fan, my tastes run a bit more melodramatic (and sometimes my prose, my agent's term 'you've gone purple again' is never meant as a compliment) which is why I love Walter far more. No one can deny, however, how well Austen can mix admiration into rivalry or the elegant dryness of her tone. This archness runs through her letters as much as her novels although the above comment (written to her niece Anna in 1814)does continue in a rather blunter vein: "I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must." It's hard not to hear the gritted teeth grinding just a little.
Walter Scott was, of course, a very different writer to Austen. His books are written on a far larger scale than hers and in a far more exuberant (also known as completely over-the-top) way but he was generous in his appreciation of Austen's style. His review of Emma, published in The Quarterly Review in 1816 is widely credited with bringing her work to a wider audience and may have been the impetus behind an early American printing. The review is not a raving endorsement but does include positive comments about Austen's other works (with one omission) and makes a distinction between Emma and what many felt was multiplicity of novels suddenly flooding the market, stating that it showed “a knowledge of the human heart, with the power and resolution to bring that knowledge to the service of honour and virtue,” unlike the “ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering-places and circulating libraries.” Whether or not Austen appreciated the review (or even knew that Scott was its author) is unclear. As with much of her writing, her response that the authoress “has no reason, I think, to complain of her treatment in it, except in the total omission of ‘Mansfield Park.’ I cannot but be sorry that so clever a man as the Reviewer of ‘Emma’ should consider it as unworthy of being noticed” can be read in a positive or a peevish tone.
No explanation or excuse needed
Scott continued to reflect positively on Austen's work throughout his own career. In 1826, he wrote in his private journal:“READ again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.” (From an article by Stuart Kelly, whose book Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation is a wonderful read for anyone interested in Scott's life). In 1832, Scott wrote in the preface to the one novel he wrote with a more domestic setting, St Ronan's Well, that he had no “hope of rivaling … the brilliant and talented names of Edgeworth, Austen..whose success seems to have appropriated this province of the novel as exclusively their own." Was Austen as generous in return? I'm not enough of an Austen scholar to know but I think it would be fair to assume she was not. Although Scott could appreciate the genre she had made her own, she was definitely no fan of his. When James Stanier-Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent, 'helpfully' suggested she might like to write a work of historical romance to celebrate the Prince, she was less than complimentary at the idea. "I am fully sensible that an Historical Romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg might be much more to the purpose of Profit or Popularity, than such pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in – but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter." Damned by faint praise indeed. It is unfair of me to call the relationship between Scott and Austen a feud, it's really more of a niggle although I'm sure her clever tongue could hold its own in any author-celebrity death match. The one I would have liked to see? Austen versus Mark Twain. Twain loathed Austen's work, interestingly he also loathed Walter Scott, so much in fact that he once cited Walter Scott disease as a prime cause of the American Civil War: "Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war." Reading Twain on Austen reminds me of the horrors of having to teach her to teenage boys: he expressed amazement that she had a natural death instead of being executed for literary crimes and followed that up by declaring he wanted to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone every time he attempted to read Pride and Prejudice. Exactly like teenage boys. I couldn't break them, I'm not convinced I didn't side with them at times, but I doubt the woman who could write "I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other" would have been troubled by any of us.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the film is never as good as the book. That hasn’t stopped millions of Austen fans enjoying countless movie and TV versions of her novels. I can’t prove it, but Jane must be one of our most adapted authors, along with Dickens and Shakespeare. She’s become the undisputed queen of costume drama; the slate of BBC adaptations alone reads like a history of British broadcasting.
It all began in 1924, when the proposal scene from Pride and Prejudice was aired on the BBC’s first radio station to an exclusive London audience. The first filmed version came 14 years later – a lavish affair, broadcast live from Alexandra Palace in May 1938, scheduled in the now traditional Sunday evening slot. Sadly, this performance (pictured above) and many other live broadcasts from the 30s and 40s are now lost. Videotape recording wasn’t possible until the 50s so the earliest BBC adaptations we have in their original form come from the 1970s.
The most famous early adaptation must be MGM’s 1940 production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson as Lizzie and a brooding Laurence Olivier as Darcy. With an occasionally hilarious script and dubious costumes, this is Austen given the Golden Age of Hollywood treatment, well before matters of authenticity were a consideration. Still, it’s essential viewing for Austen completists. The fabulous trailer gives a flavour…
Through the 70s and 80s, regular remakes were largely low budget TV movies or series, but the 90s brought a resurgence of interest in the author, with both the popular BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and movie hit, Sense and Sensibility, penned by Emma Thompson. 1995 was a good year for Austen fans and brought Jane’s work to a whole new generation.
Since then we’ve seen modern takes on the novels, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and Clueless (1995); sequels, prequels or homages like Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016); and films about Jane’s life, like Becoming Jane (2007) and Miss Austen Regrets (2007). It’s testament to the timelessness of Austen’s work that public appetite is endless. And I haven’t even touched on theatre and musical productions, of which there have been many. There’s even a feature film of Sanditon, Jane’s final unfinished novel, in production, though it seems to have stalled at the time of writing.
Jane Austen means different things to different people. I go back to both the books and the adaptations like an old comfort blanket, but it’s not just nostalgia or escapism; every time, and at different stages of my own life, I’ve found new understanding and significance beneath the romantic veneer. So, in honour of the lady herself, here are a few of my personal favourites…
Well, it had to be, didn’t it?! This version rightly deserves its place on just about every ‘best costume drama’ list you’ll find. OK, so the acting is overwrought in places, and some of the characters are a bit clichéd, but this classic, with Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennett, holds its head high above any other adaptation. There’s a respectable BBC version from 1980, and the 2005 film is not totally without merit, but Firth’s lake swimming scene remains a defining pop-culture moment that turned a whole generation on to Austen.
Emma Thompson won her second Oscar for the screenplay of this 1995 movie version of Sense and Sensibility. It was a labour of love and the result is pitch perfect. Sumptuous visuals and star turns from Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and others make this a must-see. Funny, moving, warm and witty, it captures the spirit and the underlying message of the novel. Thompson’s Screenplay and Diaries offer an entertaining insight into the making of the film and are great addition for superfans.
It’s a toss up between this version and the 2009 BBC version scripted by Sandy Welch and staring Jonny Lee Miller and Romola Garai. Both are very good, but I think I prefer the portrayal that Kate Beckinsale gives of Austen’s misguided heroine. The 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle was entertaining enough, but a bit too treacly for me.
Penned by Andrew Davies (who also wrote the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice), this high quality adaptation comes a very close second to the movie mentioned above. It’s quieter, subtler and closer to the book. It looks beautiful and the performances are excellent, especially from Hattie Morahan as Elinor, who apparently refused to watch Emma Thompson’s earlier portrayal for fear it would influence her too much. I think it’s fair to say that David Morrissey as Colonel Brandon, good though he is, can’t hold a candle to Rickman.
Not a traditional take but a brilliant one. Transporting the plot of Emma to a group of moneyed teenagers in Beverley Hills in the 1990’s was a stroke of genius by director and writer Amy Heckerling. The cultural references might be of its time but, just like Austen's novels, it's smart, witty and satirical, and has well-deserved cult status. I like to think Jane would have approved.
Love and Friendship (Film, 2016)
A recent addition but one I enjoyed very much, down to a razor-sharp script, gorgeous production design and a great performance by Kate Beckinsale. As Lady Susan, she of Austen’s often overlooked epistolary novel, Beckinsale delivers an anti-heroine with wonderful complexity and screen magnetism. Director, Whit Stillman, published an accompanying novelisation of the story (a brave move?) entitled Love &Friendship: In Which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon is Entirely Vindicated. A great example of how Austen’s work continues to be reimagined.
Persuasion (BBC, 1995)
To my mind we are still waiting for a really good adaptation of Persuasion but this version starring Amanda Root and Ciàran Hinds is the best to date. This originally aired on BBC Two in 1995 – what a year that was for Austen adaptations! The global success of Sense and Sensibility increased interest in all things Austen, and Persuasion was given a cinema release in the US and won several Baftas. This adaption leans heavily on the central performances, which I like for their realism and subtlety.
So there you have it. Which are your favourites?
A final note: This is my last post for History Girls as, due to other commitments, I must regretfully step down. Thanks to everyone who has read and commented on my posts and to my fellow History Girls: It’s been fun but, to paraphrase Mr Bennett, I have delighted you long enough!
