Jane on the airwaves

In her lifetime, Jane Austen may not have been as famous and revered as she deserved to be. But in death, she’s making up for lost time.

Case in point: The BBC’s talk-radio programming schedule for the next two weeks, which looks, if you squint, like All Austen, All The Time.

The soft opening took place back in early November, with the Radio 4 broadcast of a new two-part adaptation of Northanger Abbey. Over the weekend, the channel’s digital counterpart, Radio 4Extra, aired a 1991 version of Fay Weldon’s charming epistolary novel Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen.

But things really start hopping today, the first of fourteen consecutive days of Austen programming—some new, some exhumed from the archives--spread across Radio 4, Radio 4Extra, and even Radio 3, one of the BBC’s music stations.

There are adaptations of the remaining five Austen novels, including brand new versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. There are radio plays based on “Love and Freindship,” on Austen’s letters about Tom Lefroy, and on James Edward Austen-Leigh’s 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen. There are conversations with writers, scholars, and filmmakers. There are discussions of Austen’s life, Austen’s juvenilia, and Austen on film.

The biggest day is of course December 16, the 250^th anniversary of Austen’s birth, when nearly seven hours of programming kick off at 8:30 am, with the seventh of ten episodes in a 1991 adaptation of Lady Susan. The slate concludes at 10 pm, after a panel discussion about Austen’s “literary craft, her influence on subsequent writers in the nineteenth century, and why her work still resonates with readers today.” In between come seven other programs discussing various aspects of Austen’s legacy.

Whew! For UK Janeites—and for overseas Janeites who can access the BBC’s audio channels online--it’s going to be a full-time job keeping up with all this Austen content. Better start Christmas vacation early.