TV & RADIO
The Houses That Made Jane Austen Saturday 27 May BBC Two
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As much as for their wit, brilliant plotting and strong female leads, we still read the novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) because she was so adept at conjuring up a vivid sense of place. It therefore doesn’t seem too much of a leap to suggest that Austen herself must have been hugely influenced by where she lived or stayed – especially as these places, cottages and modest lodgings, were often physical manifestations of genteel poverty as a spinster aunt.
To mark the bicentenary of her death, these are ideas explored by Lucy Worsley in a one-off documentary based on her new book, Jane Austen At Home, and which finds the historian tracing the novelist’s life via her homes and the places she visited.
It’s an English road trip that begins in Steventon, Hampshire, where Jane’s father, George, was the local rector. The rectory, where the respectable but far-from-rich Austens lived, was demolished long ago but, with the help of archaeologist Debbie Charlton, Lucy is able to map out the building’s layout. It seems a generously sized home, until you consider Jane was one of seven siblings.
Worsley’s travels also cast light on areas of 18th-century life that now seem unusual to us. A rich but childless couple, Thomas and Katherine Knight, adopted one of Jane’s brothers, Edward. Visits to Edward at Godmersham Park near Canterbury gave Jane a first-hand view of how the wealthy lived, but also emphasised her own relative poverty, as when a visiting hairdresser took pity and offered her a discount.
Other insights come via objects that once belonged to Jane. A copy of her accounts from 1807, when Jane lived in Southampton, show a precarious financial situation where a quarter of the novelist’s modest income went on keeping up appearances via spending on tips to servants, donations and presents. Jonathan Wright