The Austen celebrations roll on, with last year's 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice followed in 2014 by the aniversary of Mansfield Park. So we teamed up with the Folio Society for a special event looking at what Jane Austen means to us today.
Joanna Trollope joins us to discuss the challenges she encountered bringing Sense and Sensibility into the 21st century for the first in a new multi-author series which will see all seven titles given a new life. How does a modern version deal with the leisure of early 19th century life? And is there anything today that can recreate the shock value of having a baby out of wedlock?
Fay Weldon wrote the screenplay for a TV serialisation of Pride and Prejudice and followed it up with an epistolary novel, Letters to Alice, in which an aunt demonstrates the relevance of Austen's fiction to her young neice. Weldon investigates an ouevre full of neglectful husbands and explains why she took the liberty of giving Mrs Bennet some of her husband's best lines.
Reading list:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Folio Society)
Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope (HarperCollins)
Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon (Sceptre)
