Original subtitles

One of the things that's always clear

about anyone who does anything, it's all about the childhood.

These are the times when real art is created.

Jane Austen's childhood was scarred by a near-death experience.

When she was seven years old,

she and her sister Cassandra were sent away to boarding school.

It's a terrible thing...

..what the girls faced.

An outbreak of typhus struck the school

and both girls fell gravely ill.

Entirely alone, Cassandra nursed Jane as her sickness worsened.

It's just Cassandra with her, being with her, holding her.

That's sibling power.

That's love.

That's extraordinary.

Throughout her life, the support and sacrifices of her sister

will enable Jane Austen to fulfil her genius.

This is the most powerful relationship

in either of those women's lives.

Today, few records of Jane Austen's life survive.

But now, with the help of writers, experts and actors...

..we can piece her story back together.

Jane Austen was a writer teeming with new ideas

who revealed profound truths about the world she lived in.

There is writing before Austen and there is writing after Austen.

That achievement is...enormous.

Jane Austen is the greatest comic novelist we have ever produced.

At a time when women were supposed to know their place,

Jane ripped up the rule book.

She's not just writing about romance.

We should see her as a political novelist.

She's telling young women, "I see you and I hear you,"

which I think is such a modern thing.

Austen's life is a tale of ambition, struggle and tragedy -

a genius cut down in her prime.

She's really good at the light, the ironic, the beautifully observed.

And then, life drives a truck into that.

This is the story of how a self-taught country girl

from a Hampshire village defied the conventions of her day

to become one of the greatest novelists who ever lived.

Her voice is so strong and funny and perceptive,

and her work's still being copied and stolen by people like me.

She did what she wanted to do,

and it makes me feel like I can always do what I want to do.

Jane Austen is 38 years old.

She has published three novels -

Pride And Prejudice,

Sense And Sensibility,

and, most recently, Mansfield Park.

Although ignored by critics, it has sold well,

and she is closer to having financial freedom than ever before.

Jane Austen is now finally on the literary map.

There's a great satisfaction in the idea that, finally,

it's her pen that's keeping a roof over her head

after the years and years of insecurity.

She's really in her stride now and she's feeling good about herself.

And why is she feeling good about herself?

Cos she's earning money.

But there's one thing still troubling her -

how to tackle big subjects and say something about the world

without alienating readers and critics.

For the past five years, Austen has been living comfortably

in a home provided by her brother Edward,

who had been raised by wealthy relatives.

He's the brother that gets given away to a rich family.

They adopt him.

It's a way that rich people that didn't have sons

could guarantee male succession.

So, Edward Austen grows up as Edward Knight

and inherits 8,000 acres in Hampshire...

..including the village of Chawton.

Chawton Cottage is Jane's sacred space that she has

with her sister Cassandra and their mother.

Since the death of their father,

Cassandra has become Jane's greatest supporter.

Jane's relationship with Cassandra is exceptionally close.

In one letter, Jane refers to themselves as "The Formidables".

And Cassandra is very, very careful to make sure

that Jane doesn't have to take on too big a share of the management

of the household, to make space for her to write.

But now, news arrives that throws Austen's life into turmoil.

Her adopted brother Edward is threatened with a lawsuit

that could strip him of his fortune.

The action is brought by a local family who believe

they are the rightful heirs to the Chawton estate.

Should Edward lose, the Austen women will become homeless once again.

Austen suddenly faces grave uncertainty.

If this lawsuit goes against Edward,

he could face having to sell off up to 80% of his enormous estate.

Jane is facing homelessness if this lawsuit is successful.

Austen's modest earnings for her writing are nowhere near enough

to protect her if she was to lose her home.

So, she turns to what she knows best - writing.

She needs profits.

She needs to make as much money as she possibly can out of her fiction.

She needs a crowd-pleaser, she needs a real banger

that's going to reach as many readers as possible.

It's not just the Austen family facing hard times.

Following a peace treaty with France during the Napoleonic Wars,

Britain's economy falls into a deep recession.

The price of bread has doubled.

And as new technology starts to take people's jobs,

riots begin to spread across the country.

The money that was being spent on armaments

and providing things for the war against Napoleon in Europe,

all of that stopped.

The Industrial Revolution was starting,

meaning people were coming in off the land.

And they were all crammed together in terrible conditions.

So, there was a social revolution in terms of living.

There's a growing sense of strife and hunger

and increasing inequality.

Austen is witnessing a terribly unequal country

that is increasingly divided.

The haves and the have-nots are so far apart,

it's like a cost-of-living crisis writ large,

right there in the village where Austen is living.

As Austen travels from her own home in Chawton

to the privileged world of her brother Edward,

she cannot help but notice the increasing divide

between rich and poor.

They're surrounded by poverty,

by people being evicted from their houses,

by people being forced to pack up and trudge on foot to London

to try to survive.

You know, people were starving around them.

As often as they can, the Austen women give food and clothes

to the most needy in their community.

She has a real sense of compassion for people around her,

and to imagine, you know, "That could be me."

Austen pours this feeling into the novel she is currently writing.

In this time of crisis, she decides to put the self-indulgent behaviour

of the rich under the microscope.

She's looking at rich people and thinking,

"You live in a such big, nice house. Do you deserve to be rich?

"Are you just a better person?"

And, of course, you're not a better person.

And this is what we meet in Emma.

Emma follows the matchmaking misadventures

of the rich and self-absorbed Emma Woodhouse.

Emma centres around a really spoilt and wealthy heroine who has power.

This is one of the first heroines she writes about

that really, fully has power.

And why does she have power? Because she has money.

Emma is vain, beautiful, shallow, irritating and very snobby.

She's a real monster.

And Jane Austen says herself,

"Nobody's going to much like this heroine except for myself."

SHE GASPS Hurry along, dear.

It's Miss Bates coming.

The central theme of the novel

is Emma becoming awakened to her thoughtless and selfish ways.

The key scene is a picnic at the picturesque Box Hill,

where Emma and her friends have gathered,

including the much poorer Miss Bates.

So, Miss Bates is a generally happy person,

but she also has verbal diarrhoea - that she cannot stop talking,

is always commenting on what she's seeing,

what she's experiencing, what she's thinking.

Shall we all play a game?

Emma finds Miss Bates irritating and mercilessly ridicules her.

I command that we each tell Miss Woodhouse something entertaining.

You may offer one thing very clever, two things moderately clever,

or three things very dull indeed.

And in return, Miss Woodhouse will laugh heartily at them all.

I shall be sure to say three very dull things

as soon as I open my mouth, shan't I?

THEY CHUCKLE

There may be a difficulty.

Oh, I doubt that. I'm sure I never fail to say things very dull.

Yes, dear, but you will be limited as to number - only three.

Oh...

To be sure.

Yes.

She's entirely humiliated and everyone else can see it.

And Emma can't see it.

It's searingly cruel.

I-I...

I-I see... I see... I see what she means.

I will try and hold my tongue.

Oh, I must make myself very disagreeable,

or she would not have said such a thing to an old...friend.

There you have, in microcosm,

an illustration of what actually is going on in the country.

There's huge disparity between rich and poor.

She's chosen the romantic structure as her narrative structure,

but her books are about everything.

So, she's not just talking about love at all.

Oh... SHE CHUCKLES

Just three.

Jane would have known people like this.

So, there is an exquisite sense of real life within these characters.

And these characters are all understandable,

which is why we still read the stories today,

because we know who these people are.

We have met people like this.

It falls to Mr Knightley to say, "You ought to be ashamed."

He really tells her off. He really gives it both barrels.

How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates?

How could you be so insolent to a woman of her age and situation?

I'd not thought it possible.

How could I help saying it?

I dare say she did not understand me.

I assure you, she felt your full meaning.

She cannot stop mentioning it.

Knightley pulls her aside and says,

"You can't act like that. That was wrong."

And sometimes, you've got to not tell the joke, actually,

you've got to hold back.

But she is poor!

Even more so than when she was born.

And should she live to be an old lady,

she will sink further still.

Her situation being every way below you should secure your compassion!

And the famous line is, you know, "It was badly done."

Badly done, Emma!

Badly done.

In Emma, Austen uses the same technique

she pioneered in Sense And Sensibility,

blending the narrator and the characters' perspectives together.

But now she pushes it even further,

playing with her readers and deliberately misleading them.

There's an example of it here in Emma,

where Mr Elton is described as "the lover of Harriet" by the narrator.

We know that that's not true.

So, what we have here is an unreliable narrator.

It is the most remarkable technique, and she invents it.

It's such a mark of her genius.

Throughout the novel, Emma begins to see the error of her ways.

You want our friendship to remain the same as it has always been.

In this scene, she tries to convince Mr Knightley that she has changed.

I know I make mistakes, but had you been here the last few days,

you would have seen how I have tried to change.

It's interesting that she names Mr Knightley "Mr Knightley",

her "Knightley in shining armour",

particularly as her brother's name was also Edward Knight.

Jane is acknowledging the role of this older male figure,

someone who looks back with love and compassion,

as Jane Austen's older brother does to her.

Please, tell me I am your friend.

I do not wish to call you my friend, because...

..I hoped to call you something infinitely more dear.

Marry me?

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

In the finale, Emma and Mr Knightley happily marry.

The enlightenment of Emma is possibly a message from Austen

that rich people have to become aware of the impact

of their lives on the rest of the world.

APPLAUSE

Emma is Austen's greatest work yet.

It's a combination of everything she's learnt so far.

It's commercial, funny, poignant and subtly political.

If it sells well, it could provide the Austen women

with the financial security they need.

Feeling let down by her previous publisher,

this time, Austen decides to go to the top

and approach the best in the business, John Murray.

John Murray is the most fashionable bookseller in London in 1814.

He is the publisher of Lord Byron.

He is as glamorous and well connected

as a bookseller can possibly be.

This unshakeable self-confidence,

this unshakeable belief in her own genius,

is what propels her to believe that she can be a John Murray author.

In October 1815, Jane's brother Henry negotiates a deal

on his sister's behalf.

Murray agrees to publish Emma, but on one condition -

he also wants the copyright.

What he's asking her to do is give up her intellectual property,

her ownership of these works.

So, it's a real conundrum for her.

Can she bear to let the ownership of her works go to him?

Austen reveals her thoughts in a letter to her sister, Cassandra.

"Mr Murray's letter has come.

"He is a rogue, of course, but a civil one.

"He sends more praise, however, than I expected.

"It is an amusing letter."

"A rogue, but a civil one" -

it's such a characteristic Austen expression.

It captures his edginess,

the fact that there's something potentially explosive

which she is going to have to handle very, very carefully.

The prospect of a cash injection is too good to refuse.

Austen wants her brother Henry to accept the deal.

She obviously wants to be published by John Murray.

But Henry is prevaricating,

and I think she's feeling really infuriated.

I think she's feeling, "Are you kidding me?

"This is John Murray!"

So, Henry's in danger of really messing this up.

Then, with the deal still hanging in the balance,

Jane's brother falls gravely ill.

The talks with Murray grind to a halt.

The expectation is that it will be delayed

and that everyone will wait for Henry Austen to get better.

But, no, she takes over.

She thinks, "I don't really need Henry. I can do this myself.

"I can take matters into my own hands."

Austen takes personal control of the negotiations

and rips up Murray's terms.

She's been burnt by deals like this before.

What she's doing is fighting for her own voice,

and I really think that matters.

Which is a bold move. That's a boss move.

Austen negotiates her own contract.

She won't sell her copyright.

Instead, she will take on the cost of printing Emma herself.

Austen is thinking about the profits from her work

and how that could function as a pension for the Austen women.

So, she's thinking about the long-term gain.

As part of this deal,

Austen also pays for a second print run of Mansfield Park.

She believes it never got the attention it deserved.

It's a huge risk, but if it comes off,

she will keep 90% of the profits.

She's unafraid to meet this legendary John Murray

and face him out and advocate for herself.

She is ahead of her time, cos men always make the deals.

And it's still... You know, if you look at the movie industry now,

it's still hard, as a woman, to stand up for yourself.

Austen is the first female novelist on Murray's books.

It's a real sign of her wanting to take back some of the control

that she's not had for most of her life.

With this new deal, Austen accepts that she has no control

over when Murray will send the books to the printers.

It must have felt fantastic.

But, you know, you can't actually make a publisher do anything.

That is infuriating, cos I've had delays in publishing

that I have just gone, "Well, why the delay?

"Why isn't it being published?" You have no control over that.

With the lawsuit hanging over them,

it is an absolute imperative for her at this point,

that the process of printing happens quickly as possible.

Then, an unexpected opportunity falls into Austen's lap.

As in so many cases in Jane's life,

an incident of misfortune turns into something quite amazing.

It turns out that Henry's doctor

is also the official physician to the Prince Regent.

Jane hears at first-hand

how her novels are beloved by the Prince Regent,

how he has multiple copies of them in his different residences.

Dr Baillie now makes a tempting suggestion.

He offers to arrange a date for Austen to have a private tour

of the Prince Regent's library,

one of the most luxurious libraries in the country.

This is a slightly complicated coincidence,

because Jane herself is a great enemy of the Prince Regent.

He's spending money and he's gluttonous.

And there are these caricatures in the shop windows

showing him with prostitutes.

He's made a figure of mockery,

and Jane Austen certainly doesn't like him.

No doubt Jane will have been torn over what to do.

Jane must stand her moral ground

or put her loathing of the Prince Regent aside

for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This is a compromised invitation, but she's a pragmatist.

She would have been crazy not to do this.

You know, it's not the last time or first time

that she's had to suck it up.

13th of November, 1815 -

Austen arrives at Carlton House, the Prince Regent's home.

A glittering party palace at the heart of decadent London,

the Prince has spent millions on its renovation, running up huge debt.

In 1811, he spent over �10 million in today's money

on just one party, as his people starved.

This is Jane Austen, very far removed from Chawton Cottage.

We're suddenly seeing her in exalted circles.

Surely, she's feeling to herself, "I'm really making it."

She is greeted by James Stanier Clarke,

the Prince Regent's personal librarian.

During the visit, Clarke makes an offer of a lifetime -

why doesn't Austen dedicate her next novel to the Prince?

Jane is not 100% sure what to do with it.

She feels her principled distrust of the Prince Regent kicking in.

But she might be able to use that dedication to the Prince Regent

as leverage, almost, against her publisher,

in order to get Emma published more quickly.

Adding a dedication to the Prince Regent

will drive the sales she needs.

Austen sees this as a unique marketing opportunity for Emma.

It's just huge.

This is a deal breaker, in terms of her visibility as a writer.

Austen accepts the offer to force the hand of her publisher, Murray.

She rolls the dice and decides to go with it,

thinking that, "I have had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am."

This time, she's going to make the system work for her

rather than against her.

She has been writing for 20 years about manoeuvring women,

and here is Austen performing a successful manoeuvre

with the most fashionable publisher in London.

Austen's plan works.

Murray prints 2,000 copies of Emma,

rather than the usual print run of 500.

Emma is split up and sold in volumes,

as all novels are at the time.

Whilst driving greater profits,

it also enables people to share and read the novel at the same time.

On the 20th of December, 1815,

Austen gifts the Prince Regent three specially bound volumes of Emma.

This is Jane Austen's crowning moment,

the result of years of hard work and determination.

Emma is a blockbuster and flies off the shelves.

She's got a publisher who believes in her,

she's got a stonking banger of a book that's hitting the shelves,

and it's got a royal endorsement.

After so many setbacks, being scammed by publishers,

being dismissed and rejected,

she must feel amazing because also she's had a really integral part

in engineering its success.

One of the keys to John Murray's flourishing business,

is a new marketing tool...

..the book review,

where he pays famous authors to plug his latest books.

Murray asks his friend, Walter Scott,

to write a piece on Emma and Austen's previous works.

Sir Walter Scott writes an extraordinarily perceptive,

a real rocket boost of a review of Emma...

To get good reviews is great.

It's... It's really...

It's great and those are the moments you have to really savour.

..but when the review is shown to Jane Austen, however,

this is not quite good enough.

The review lists Austen's previous novels,

but fails to mention her most personal work,

Mansfield Park, which she had just paid to re-release.

It stings Austen.

She can't actually hear the praise

because that omission is quite devastating to her,

and she immediately sends off a letter of complaint

to her publisher, saying,

"How come someone so clever can fail to notice Mansfield Park?"

A great number of novelists have an orphan child,

and the orphan child is the novel that came out

that no-one seemed to want.

I have a novel called The Story Of The Night,

and you haven't heard of it, no-one's heard of it because

no-one's read it, and yet, I was pretty sure,

even the eve of its coming out,

that it was going to do all these things and it simply shrunk.

It simply disappeared.

I thought, "If only people could read this book,

"they would love it."

But, no, no, the answer to that is no.

But Austen's personal grievances are soon overshadowed.

SHOUTING AND EXPLOSIONS

In 1815, the peace with France collapses

and fighting resumes at the Battle of Waterloo.

British forces under the Duke of Wellington

finally defeat Napoleon's army,

but Britain's victory comes at great cost to the economy.

The move from a wartime to a peacetime economy is very bouncy.

The first thing with peace is you cut the size of your armed forces.

And the Navy, which had had 120,000 men,

was cut down to about 30,000 men.

And those men were put out on the streets with very little,

ditto the army. So, suddenly there was this extra mass of people

wandering around, trying to find jobs and things.

All these things together meant a perfect storm in terms of

things going wrong, and that caused huge problems

with banks going bust, with people losing huge fortunes.

Very, very disturbed and disturbing times.

With the war over,

Austen's seafaring brothers, Frank and Charles, return home.

1816 begins as a period of prolonged peace for the first time

in a really long time,

and yet, the Austen family are imploding.

Edward Knight's lawsuit is still going ahead over Chawton

and Henry Austen's bank has gone bankrupt.

The impact is huge because most of the family have

invested in his bank and they all lose money.

The collapse of Henry's bank is catastrophic for the family.

Edward loses �2 million in today's money,

and Frank and Henry can no longer afford their small annual

contribution to the Austen women.

The Austen women are at the behest

of the men in their lives,

who control the purse strings.

They have no power to extricate themselves from the financial

place that they find themselves.

Austen at least feels, "Well, hurray, I've got a stonking

"pay cheque on the way in," cos Emma has done spectacularly well.

12 months after Emma is published,

Murray finally sends Austen her first pay cheque.

Austen receives a paltry �38.

That's just �3,800 today.

The second edition of Mansfield Park, which Murray has published at

the same time as Emma, has not been a success.

He has large numbers of copies still on his hands

and he's had to pulp them,

and Jane has still had to pay for the costs of producing

those pulped volumes.

The failure of Mansfield Park has wiped out the profits from Emma,

which would have totalled approximately �40,000 today.

Had Austen not included Mansfield Park in that contract,

Austen and her sister and her mum would be safe for some years

to come, regardless of their brothers' finances,

and this costs her dearly.

She's made the wrong choice.

She's backed the wrong horse.

Her great love of her child, Mansfield Park,

has betrayed her once again into making a commercial mistake.

This is a very dark time and it really begins to tell on Jane.

The Austens are now in dire financial straits.

One brother is bankrupt, another faces a multi-million-pound lawsuit

and Jane's earnings have been swallowed up.

Meanwhile, Jane, aged 40, works on a new novel about the passage of time

and life's regrets.

What she does is she writes her way out of it.

That's her lifeline.

If I don't write, I feel weird,

but the act of doing it is really important.

In Persuasion, she's not thinking

about business or her audience, she's just writing from the heart.

The novel follows the story of Anne Elliot, who is persuaded to

break off an engagement to a young naval officer

of lower social status, Captain Wentworth.

Wentworth is left heartbroken.

We have an older Austen writing about an older heroine, who is

herself looking back on her life and is herself in a pensive state.

She's thinking about the choices that she's made in her life

and that seeps right into the narrative.

Despite him being away at sea for many years,

Anne is still in love with Wentworth and regrets not following her heart.

Sweetheart, it's been seven years.

Eight.

You couldn't possibly still feel...

I do!

Frederick Wentworth is the only person, save you and my mother,

who ever really saw me...

..and understood me...

..and loved me.

Aw...

Ha-ha!

Anne and Wentworth meet again

when he returns from the Napoleonic Wars a hero.

In a key scene, when Anne is playing with her nephews,

Wentworth removes a clambering child from her back.

This act of kindness encourages Anne to question

whether Wentworth might still have feelings for her.

Boy could have been hurt...

Austen writes, "His little sturdy hands

"were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne

"away before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it."

It's a beautifully simple gesture,

very modern in its simplicity, I think.

She is really writing the ideal man here.

He's not Darcy.

He's... He's gentle.

He does what a partner should do.

He relieves you of your burden.

She's really redefining the sort of male hero

of her romance fiction

in those little moments.

In one of the most moving scenes,

Captain Wentworth overhears Anne debating the differences

between men and women.

You look a bit sad, Captain Harville.

In this conversation,

Anne boldly declares it is women who love the longest.

We women do not forget you so soon as you forget us.

The only privilege I claim for my sex is that of loving longest,

loving even when hope is gone.

Loving because you don't have a choice.

During this scene, Captain Wentworth remains completely silent.

It's two people talking,

a third person listening

and the reader overseeing all of this.

Wentworth is silent.

Now, his silence is so active, it's so filled with things,

but you realise how much he's listening.

Moved by what he is hearing, Wentworth writes Anne a letter,

confessing he has loved her all along.

The scratching of that pen has an enormous power in this moment...

..the fact that he doesn't go to her to say it, her writes to her.

It's a letter which begins with these wonderful words,

"I can listen no longer in silence."

"I can listen no longer in silence.

"Anne, you pierce my soul.

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman...

"..that his love has an earlier death.

"I am half agony, half hope...

"Tell me not that I am too late,

"that such precious feelings are gone forever.

"I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own

"than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago...

"You alone have brought me to Bath, for you alone I think and plan.

"But, of course, you have not seen this. How could you?

"Because your love has not lasted as long as mine.

"Anne...

"..I have loved no-one but you."

"You pierce my soul."

"Half agony, half hope."

This is almost a religious sound she's making.

I think it's the only time that one of her men actually speaks seriously

from the self, from a part that's normally held at bay or withheld.

And obviously, he writes it, rather than speaks it

because it would sound like weakness,

but when he writes it, you can see what's always at the heart

of everything she does, the inner life.

Here, you can really feel the simple, naked longing.

I mean, one of the great love letters in all literature.

Everyone who's loved and lost reads that

and kindles the hope that the person that they've loved all their life

might come to them at the end of it and say, "I never forgot you.

"I'm still here."

Frederick!

In the end, Anne gets a second chance at happiness.

She follows her heart, rejecting the life her family wanted for her.

Overcome with emotion, they confess their love.

One of the most exhilarating things, I think, about that novel

is the way Anne Elliot doesn't take fixity.

She doesn't take those nice, stolid English country houses

that her other heroines inherit or marry into.

She chooses mobility, risk, danger,

and she chooses a completely different path for herself,

just like Jane Austen.

It was a sign that a woman that age, in her, you know,

beyond what was considered marriageable age,

could actually find happiness.

I think it's a metaphor for Jane Austen's own life.

I doubt very much whether Jane Austen is thinking,

"Oh, well, I might still meet someone.

"I'm not going to be that person. I'm not going to be a married woman.

"I am going to be a spinster,

"but I am going to make something of that."

There's no sense in her letters whatsoever that this is a woman

who's got any regrets, who's looking back and saying,

"Wish I'd got married, wish I'd had children.

"Did I make the wrong decision?"

There just doesn't feel like any of that.

In July 1816, as Austen writes the final chapters,

she begins to feel unwell.

I think reading the final chapters of Persuasion,

it's hard to avoid reflecting on the fortitude that Austen had to

marshal to produce that perfect,

that perfectly hopeful resolution

at a point where she herself was increasingly in physical pain.

Persuasion is the only complete Austen novel that has

a surviving alternate ending.

It shows rushed scrawls and crossings out.

I mean, part of the problem of writing a novel is that you

imagine an ending, but then, you put all the detail you're working on,

you're working with so much detail that when it

comes to the moment you've imagined, it's not right,

and you need to go over and over it, adding and adding and adding...

..just to see if there's any way you could bring this down naturally,

and the only person who can judge it is you.

To have a document that shows us exactly the process of revision,

of rewriting, of struggling for the perfect resolution

of that narrative is very precious indeed.

We can see the process of a novelist who is entering

a phase of late mastery.

Aged just 41, Jane is at the height of her powers.

In Persuasion, she has written what is widely believed

to be her greatest work.

But her sickness has worsened.

She is suffering from backaches and fainting spells.

We do not know what illness Jane has.

It is likely a form of tuberculosis.

Jane chooses to lay herself across three wooden chairs,

saving the sofa for her elderly mother.

I think this tells us an enormous amount

about looking after the women in her family

and of always being the provider and the self-sacrificer.

But Austen's mind is as active as ever.

She isn't slowing down, isn't stopping.

She's still got things to say.

Drawing on her experience of illness, she begins a new novel.

Here and in great pain, she begins a new literary adventure,

but she's writing against the clock.

She's doing the only thing she knows, which is write.

She's dying.

She's going to write about death

and she's going to do it brilliantly

cos she's got one last one in her.

In Sanditon, Austen creates a drama

set in a fictional seaside resort.

The enthusiastic Mr Parker is keen to convince

everyone of the town's healing powers.

Sea air, better than any medicine or tonic.

And there, there is the sea itself.

Oh, yes, I see it!

Unlike Austen's previous novels, which focus on a single heroine,

Sanditon features a collection of characters

and is written much like a sitcom.

There you are!

Are you surprised to see us?

How do you do?

How do you do?! Oh...

Arthur and Diana Parker are two of Sanditon's most comical characters.

My sister, Miss Diana Parker, and my brother, Arthur.

We've all been very ill, almost at death's door...

They constantly complain of illness,

whilst strolling around Sanditon looking the picture of health.

..and we came to call on you as soon as we arrived,

only to learn you were on a cliff walk,

so we thought we'd be brave and surprise you.

Our lodgings are closest.

Come, take tea with us and let's, all of us, for God's sake,

get out of this howling gale.

Come, come.

Austen paints the characters as hypochondriacs

who worry incessantly about the weather.

You see, we were sure of a good fire.

Poor Arthur feels the cold so.

It takes some balls to mock hypochondriacs

when you're on death's door yourself.

HE LAUGHS

It's quite... It's quite an "up yours", isn't it?

But I guess if we know nothing else of Austen,

she was quite bold and forthright.

I don't find the weather chilly at all.

Oh. What a constitution you must have.

In one witty scene,

Arthur reveals his secret recipe for a healthy lifestyle.

If I were bilious, wine would disagree with me,

when I've always found it does my nerves good.

Do you know, the more I drink, the better I feel.

Often, I wake up in the morning feeling very groggy,

but then, after a few glasses of wine, I feel as right as rain.

That's quite remarkable, don't you think?

Though I can take a little toast with butter on it,

no more than six or seven slices, though.

Will you let me toast you a slice or two?

Please do.

Everyone uses comedy, Austen does it,

and everyone I've ever worked with who's any good does it.

We all use humour to get us through those tough times.

She likes to have fun.

She's writing with this child's mind and being playful,

and being elastic, and being silly,

and wanting to make people laugh.

And in Sanditon, she's going to go out laughing.

Miss Phyllida Beaufort and Miss Lambe.

Austen also does something revolutionary -

she writes a wealthy, black, female character, Miss Lambe.

In this adaptation, she makes a glamorous entrance.

Ladies. Georgiana.

The ways in which she's writing black characters into her story,

she's way ahead of even our time, right?

We think of things like Bridgerton

now as radical and revolutionary,

but there was Jane Austen doing it in her time.

Despite her best efforts, Jane's illness worsens

and she is forced to abandon the novel.

I just would love to have known what Jane Austen was going to do

with this beautiful, rich, powerful black woman.

Where would she take that?

With Jane Austen, of course, there is no decline.

She is cut down at the very peak of her powers.

Austen knows she is dying.

She agrees to be taken to Winchester to see a specialist.

For Jane, the drama of real life

gets in the way of the creative drama.

In a letter to a friend,

Austen uses her unfailing humour to poke fun at her own situation.

"I am now a very genteel, portable sort of invalid.

"If I live to be an old woman, I must expect to wish I had died now,

"blessed in the tenderness of such a family."

"A genteel, portable sort of invalid."

Fantastic. Very funny.

You've got to be able to laugh at death,

treat death in the way that you treat life...

..face it, front on, with wit.

It's the only way to do it.

It's what she did.

By the 15th of July, 1817,

Austen is being nursed in Winchester by her sister, Cassandra.

She's in excruciating pain.

Austen dictates a poem to her sister, 24 lines of comic verse.

These are the last words she will ever write.

"When once we are buried, you think we are dead.

"But behold me, immortal!

"Set off for your course.

"I'll pursue with my reign."

To use the D-word, the word "dead", is pretty powerful.

The fact that it was able to come off the tongue of someone who

knew that they were at the end of life.

But Jane always tried to be truthful, didn't she?

And why should it be different on her deathbed?

On the 17th of July, 1817,

Cassandra cradles Jane's head throughout the night.

She remains in that position for six hours.

The detail of her death is incredibly moving.

She's at a sort of crooked angle and Cassandra's holding her head,

and her head is bent in an awkward way,

and so her sister holds her and cares for her

in these last hours of intimacy.

There's a sort of very poignant echo of their childhood...

..where sisters care for each other, sisters look out for each other,

and this is its sort of final embodiment.

We have the most poignant end to a life of sibling love,

a love that has been present for 40-plus years.

The unbelievably fitting nature of the fact

that it is just Cassandra with her at her end.

I nursed my sister.

I was at my sister's deathbed.

Erm...

And it's...exquisitely powerful...

..and very tender.

And I can only think Cassandra would have had that self-same experience.

Cassandra then tends to her sister's body.

It's the last thing that she can do for her sister,

who she describes as her sun, the sun of her life.

In a letter to their niece,

Cassandra writes of Jane's final moments.

"I have lost a treasure.

"Such a sister. Such a friend.

"She was the sun of my life.

"The gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow.

"And it is as if I had lost a part of myself."

You couldn't get a better epitaph than that, could you?

"The gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow."

That's...

That's the most powerful relationship

in either of those women's lives.

Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Only four people attend her funeral.

Her gravestone makes no mention of her career as a writer.

In her will, Austen leaves almost everything to her sister,

including the rights to all of her works.

I think that's so telling, that she doesn't leave it to her brothers

because, after all, it's Cassandra that's been there with her

through thick and thin, through all the ups and downs

that they've had to face, both financially and privately.

And I think it's right, you know.

It's quite a beautiful thing.

25 years after Jane Austen's death,

Cassandra burns thousands of Jane's letters.

Only 161 survive.

It's really seen today as an act of literary vandalism.

People are horrified,

"How could she do this?" because the letters are so brilliant.

We do not know why Cassandra burnt them,

but it is widely believed she did it to protect Austen's legacy.

It's many, many years later

when she's getting old herself that she makes the decision that,

"I cannot... I cannot let these letters out into the world."

Jane always speaks the plain truth

and Cassandra genuinely didn't want to hurt the family's feelings.

It cannot have been easy for her to destroy the letters that had

been a lifeline and really brought her close to her sister.

Aside from her novels, nearly all we know of Austen

comes from the letters Cassandra deemed acceptable enough to save.

If you want to date literary modernity at a particular point,

it is 1815, '16.

There is writing before Austen and there is writing after Austen.

That achievement is...enormous.

The greatest writers in our language - the Brontes,

Mary Shelley, Dickens - they all come on the heels

of this huge legacy given to them by Jane Austen.

She did it. She did it before anyone else.

She wasn't concerned with leaving behind money or even children

or having a husband.

She was concerned with leaving her voice.

This is a woman who is leading the charge in saying what

literally nobody has said before.

She did what she wanted to do.

She made a career as a novelist and made money out of it,

and her work's still being copied and stolen by people like me.

I feel I know her.

And considering she was born 250 years ago...

..it's like breaking bread with the dead, isn't it?

Shaking hands across the centuries, gossiping - what's not to like?

Take an interactive journey through spaces

that shaped Jane Austen's life and work,

and explore how her influence

extends across time, place and cultures.

Scan the QR code or visit bbc.co.uk/austengenius

and follow the links to the Open University.

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