The Women Who Made Jane Austen episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 16, 2025 · 1H 6M

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

from Secret Life of Books

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Jane Austen has a big birthday this week -- her 250th to be exact. Happy Birthday Jane!Over here on SLOB we're throwing Jane a party, and we've invited guests. They're truly the guests of honor. The women who made Jane Austen. You may not know all of their names, or any of them. We introduce some literary superstars from their own day, who influenced Austen's craft, storytelling, irony and encouraged her appetite for wild, subversive stories.We tend to see Austen as a lone genius, carving out a voice for women in a world where they were often unheard. She was, in fact, just a particularly brilliant member of a wider social and literary movement. She was great, and she was great because she stood on the bonnets of giantesses. Please meet the bolters, bad-asses, barn-stormers, bold adventurers. The bloody-minded and the bloody-brilliant.Writers and books mentioned in the episode:Aphra Behn, Oroonoko and Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His SisterDelarivier Manley, The New AtlantisEliza Haywood, Love in ExcessCharlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote and HenriettaAnn Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance; The Romance of the Forest; The Mysteries of Udolpho; and The ItalianMary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women; A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark; Maria; or, the Wrongs of WomanFrances Burney, Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The WandererCharlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets and The Old Manor HouseElizabeth Inchbald, A Simple StoryMaria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, Harrington and Belinda.Jane Austen, The Beautifull Cassandra (juvenilia) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Women Who Made Jane Austen

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