Secret Life of Books16 Dec 2025

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

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 Sister

Delarivier Manley, The New Atlantis

Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess

Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote and Henrietta

Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance; The Romance of the Forest; The Mysteries of Udolpho; and The Italian

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women; A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark; Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman

Frances Burney, Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The Wanderer

Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets and The Old Manor House

Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story

Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, Harrington and Belinda.

Jane Austen, The Beautifull Cassandra (juvenilia)

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