There is one novelist that deserves to have a three-part documentary about her and that is the iconic writer, Jane Austen. She is one of the main authors in our history that has shaped writing as it is today.
Jane Austen is the best comedic, political and satiric novelist that we have ever produced. She makes people think that you can do whatever you want.
Especially women!
I hope to have the same wit and humour in this article as Jane Austen used in her books while writing this feature.
It’s Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this year.
She probably would say “I wish as well as everyone else, to be perfectly happy, but like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”
BBC productions have made an inspiring documentary called JANE AUSTEN: RISE OF A GENIUS.
The docuseries deployed all experts, writers, actors saying lines from her surviving letters even excerpts from the books and screen. All re-enactments of her life as well as all her literature even the ones that she never finished.
A few experts and actors are Candice Carty-Williams, Dr Paula Bryne, Greg Wise and Charity Wakefield. They were being enthusiastic and passionate without being nauseating.
The whole show is narrated by Juliet Stevenson. She takes the audience through Austen birth, her personal and professional life, her setbacks and successes. What I found interesting, and I learnt a lot about was the publishing history.
From impoverished but comfortable beginnings we watch as Jane (one of eight children) was encouraged by her rector father to delve into his extensive library.
Was it here that her love of writing began?
We follow her through her first publication, never under her own name alas, broken engagements and decline into ill health and an untimely death.
Through all this runs a very human, inquisitive and socially conscious mind who thought about the world and her place in it very deeply.
Women’s place in society, education and even the slave trade come under her magnifying glass and its through these themes in her work that you see what a modern writer she was.
The highs and lows of her life are beautifully examined in this sensitive and sympathetic look at perhaps our most treasured and enigmatic authors.
Watch it and fall under the Austin spell that shows no sign of diminishing.
Even Austen herself would approve of this outstanding documentary.
Perhaps the best documentary I have seen with such moving commentaries by the experts, actors and authors. Powerful, enlightening and wonderful .