Susannah Fullerton: Thank you everyone for coming along this evening. Thank you to the National Library of Australia for putting on this event and obviously providing a room with lots of seats for all of you. And thank you also to ASA Cultural Tours whose idea this lecture was. They came up with the idea and worked with the National Library. It's fabulous and a wonderful testament to the power of Jane that so many people are interested 250 years after her birth in learning more about Jane Austen.

When Jane Austen was born 250 years ago in December, she was the seventh child of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. She was their second daughter. She was born during a very, very cold winter, so there was lots of snow outside on the ground. This is the little home where she was born in Steventon, Parsonage. And her mother, as she proudly cradled her little baby, could never have dreamt that 250 years later around the world, conferences, balls, picnics would be held, talks all sorts of different events, that there is a positive flood this year of new books about Jane Austen even I'm struggling to keep up with it. How could Mrs Austen ever have dreamed that this little baby daughter would become such an amazingly famous name around the world?

Jane Austen was of course born into a clergy family. Her father had two livings. This is the church at Steventon. It didn't have the spire when Jane Austen knew it, but that's a later edition. But otherwise it is very much unchanged. So she would've gone to church every Sunday with her father giving the sermon.
He didn't earn a lot. He had to get on his horse and ride off to the neighbouring village after the sermon here and give another sermon. And that all helped him to earn a little bit more money. He tutored young boys who came to stay in the parsonage in order to prepare them for university, teaching them their Latin and Greek. Girls didn't need those subjects, and that was the view in those days. And he also farmed the glee lands around the church. So all this brought in a little bit of money, but not a lot.

And Jane Austen grew up knowing that her father could never provide a large dowry for her. So when she writes feelingly in her novels of being a single woman of small fortune, she knew what she was writing about.
Now what did she look like? Well, the answer is we are not terribly sure. This is a portrait. It's known as the Rice portrait of a young girl who might actually have been called Jane Austen, but almost certainly it's not our Jane Austen, the novelist. It was by quite a reputable painter of the day. It's been hugely debated and argued over by art historians, costume historians. People have analysed the paper. And almost certainly, which is sad, it is not our Jane Austen, the writer, because it is a very charming portrait. And we've got so little showing us what she looked like, that we would love to know that this is what Jane Austen looked like as a young girl.

This is the only authentic portrait that we have of Jane Austen. And it was done by her sister Cassandra, who was not a great artist. As you can see, it's something of a sketch. And this very recently made its first visit to Australia. It went to the Writer's Revealed exhibition on the Gold Coast. So many Janeites went to see it as Jane Austen made her very first visit to Australia in this important year. This painting or sketch hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, not because Cassandra was a great artist, but because it is the only authentic picture that we have of Jane Austen.

Now, after her death, one of her nephews published a memoir about Jane Austen and he said to the family, look, do we have a decent picture of Aunt Jane because I'd like to put one in my book. And this was produced. And he said, oh dear, she looks a bit grumpy. That mouth is rather tight. The arms are folded. Maybe that looks a little bit aggressive. He wasn't terribly happy.

So he said, look, maybe we'll pay an artist to give Aunt Jane a facelift and pretty her up a little bit. So this is the result. There's a hint of a smile. The cheeks are a bit rounder, the frills are more definite.
And today biographers and historians writing about Jane Austen tend to sort of 50 50 use these two pictures. I prefer the other one. I think it captures Jane Austen's sharpness, which is there in her novels and her letters. There's even one version of this one that has a wedding ring added to her finger. And as Jane Austen never married, that seems unbelievably inaccurate.

The only other picture we have is this one, and this is woefully disappointing. You feel like shouting, Jane, would you please just turn around and show us what you look like? Again, it was done by Cassandra. Jane sitting outside with her bonnet strings untied on a nice day. So really we don't have a great idea of what this wonderful writer actually looked like.

Now we know that she put her pen to paper at an early age. She loved writing little things that she could read to her family in the drawing room after dinner and entertain them. So we have Jane Austen's juvenilia, that's what it's known as. You can find all of it very easily online. So really from about the age of 11 or 12, she began to write these funny little stories. And I think they're fascinating to read. Jane Austen has actually been compared with Mozart as being one of the very few people to produce works of genius while still a young teenager.

So this is one of them, the history of England. So she wrote about some of the kings and queens of England, and she gives a little subtitle to this work and says that it is by a partial prejudiced and ignorant historian. So she's warning you that if she gets something wrong, then you can't complain because she's already told you she's ignorant. And then, please note there will be very few dates in this history. She didn't have Wikipedia to check dates, so she couldn't be bothered going away and finding out the dates. And she just said, well, you just simply won't get them. It's a wickedly funny piece, gorgeous to read. And her sister Cassandra did some illustrations to go with it. Now, Jane Austen hated Elizabeth the first, so she looks like a witch. She loved Mary Queen of Scots, so she looks much prettier and nicer.

But this is just one of these brilliant little pieces that Jane Austen wrote from about, as I say, about 11 through to about 16, 17 before she then began to move onto things like Lady Susan and more mature writing. And she would read them to her family in the drawing room and they would laugh in all the right places. And this would encourage her as a young author. Yes, I can make people laugh. I know what I'm doing with my pen. And some of the stories show sort of an early genesis of 'Pride and Prejudice' or some of the characters that appear in the mature novels you meet early versions of them are in the juvenilia. So it really is wonderful to read.

Now, of course, what was expected for Jane Austen was that she would go to balls, she would go to country house events, she would visit neighbours, she would meet a young man, she would fall in love, get married, possibly have dozens of children. There was one person in the village who'd had 18 babies. And Jane Austen put in a letter that she thought separate bedrooms would be a very good idea. I'm sure the poor mother of the 18 children thought it was a good idea as well. She could well have died in childbirth had she married. However she did not marry.

She met this handsome young Irishman called Tom Lefroy and her very first surviving letter writes of how she was enjoying dancing with them and flirting with them. However, she was not a good marital prospect. He had five unmarried sisters back in Ireland. He was dependent on a rich uncle who was paying his fees to become a lawyer and he could not afford to marry a girl with no dowry from Hampshire, no important connections. She simply was not a good match. So he went away, married a girl with a large dowry. He became very pompous and boring in his later years. So maybe Jane Austen had a very good escape from him.

However, her writing didn't seem to be doing much at this time. She had written 'Lady Susan' a novel in letters or a novella, really wickedly funny. And she had tried her hand at some fuller novels. So she had done an early version of 'Sense and Sensibility', an early version of 'Pride and Prejudice'. And one of 'Northanger Abbey'.

Her father even wrote to a London publisher and said, I've got this novel, would you be interested in publishing it? He didn't send the manuscript, this is of 'Pride and Prejudice', but he just told the publisher about it. The publisher wrote back by Return of Post and said, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not interested. I would love to dig that publisher up and say to him, you turned down what has been voted the world's favourite novel.
It has also been voted the most romantic novel ever written. And the moment when an actor called Colin Firth emerged from a pond in a wet white shirt has been voted the favourite television moment of all time. Lots of gay men voted for it as well.

So she was writing these books and nothing was happening. And then her father and mother decided to move to Bath. So this is Sydney Gardens in Bath. Now, if you were planning to move somewhere, maybe to the coast or wherever to a retirement village, you would be most unlikely to take with you your daughters in their late twenties. But Jane and Cassandra had no income whatsoever of their own. So when their parents decided to move, they had to move as well.

And Jane's time in Bath was not very happy. Her father died after they'd been a bit over a year in the city with them, of course died some of his income as a clergyman. So they were reduced to smaller amounts and the brothers had to sort of give handouts to help them. They shifted around to cheaper lodgings, and she had been trying a novel called 'The Watsons'. She wrote several chapters of that, but then she just gave up on it. So if at this time in her life she'd thought, I've tried writing but nobody seems at all interested in what I'm producing except for my relatives, maybe I'll just give up writing novels. But fortunately that didn't happen.

Now after these few rather unhappy years in Bath, she was feeling she was on the shelf. She did actually get one proposal of marriage from a family friend, a young man called Harris Bigg-Wither, whose descendants live in Australia today. She said yes to him that night, but the next morning when she woke up, she realised, maybe she didn't sleep that night, she realised she'd done the wrong thing. And she told the man that she wasn't in love with him and she couldn't marry him. She was very embarrassed by the whole episode and hurried away, and that was the only proposal that we know about.

So this is of course, 'Northanger Abbey'. So she had written an early version of this novel. It didn't have that title. It was called 'Catherine' at the time. Later it got called 'Northanger Abbey'. And this book did actually get accepted by a publisher. A publisher paid her the very grand sum of 10 pounds for this novel. Now so Walter Scott was getting 1000 pounds at least per book. Jane Austen got 10 pounds for 'Northanger Abbey'.

She sat back all excited to see her novel in print, and the publisher for some reason did nothing about producing the book. Many, many years went by. She by this time had anonymously published two of her novels. And she wrote to the publisher and she said, could you please tell me what you are planning to do about my book? Because if you don't want to publish it, I'd like to find someone who will. He said, well, you can give me back the 10 pounds and you can have back your manuscript. She had spent the 10 pounds, so she had to wait quite some time before she could manage to scrape it together and pay to get her manuscript back. And sadly, Northanger Abbey was only published in the year after her death.

Now that is a publisher I would dearly love to dig up to let him know that Jane Austen became the first woman writer in Britain ever to get onto her country's currency. And the note she's on is the 10 pound note. So I think there's wonderful justice in that.

So really by this time she's thinking, well, I got a novel sold for 10 pounds, but it's not been published. My writing career is going nowhere. Maybe I'll just completely give up.

And the next couple of years were not very happy. They were spent in South Hampton. Her father had, by this time died. They shared a house with one of her brothers who was based there with his work in the Navy. They all lived together because it was cheaper. And really this was a couple of rather unhappy years in Jane Austen's life.

And then finally, one of her brothers who had actually been adopted by wealthy relatives, his name was Edward, Edward Austen, but he eventually became Edward Austen Knight. He took on the surname of the couple who had adopted him. And they owned two stately homes, one in Kent and this one in a village called Chawten in Hampshire. He rented this house out to tenants. Occasionally he stayed there, but not very often.

And this today is a wonderful study centre for early women writers with a truly extraordinary library in it. Some of the books are the only known copies of novels by early women writers of late 18th, early 19th century.

So he didn't offer his mother and two unmarried sisters this house, but along the road was what was called Chawton Cottage. It has six bedrooms, which I think makes it big as a cottage in our estimation. But he said to his mother, would you like to go and live there and you don't have to pay me any rent? So in the year 1809, the Austen ladies moved to Chawton Cottage, which is today the Jane Austen House Museum visited by millions of people around the world because that is where Jane Austen wrote some of her novels and where she edited some and she sent them out into the world. And of course, they are having an extremely busy year this year with the big anniversary.

So there is 'Lady Susan' and 'The Watsons'. These of course have been published after her death. 'Lady Susan', that she never saw published in her lifetime, 'The Watsons' that is unfinished and 'Sanditon', which she started before she died and of course illness prevented her from finishing that. So again, you can find most of these online if you're looking for them or in many different published versions. But these are sort of the bits that Jane Austen wrote, the unfinished things or the earlier works, like 'Lady Susan'. All worth reading. Every single word Jane Austen wrote is worth reading.

So eventually having settled Chawton cottage, she thought, right, I'm going to have another go at getting my books published. So she'd done some early version of 'Sense and Sensibility', the manuscript has not survived. We don't know what it was like. She wrote to a London publisher and said, would you be interested in publishing this book? And he said, yes, but if I run to any financial loss, you have to reimburse me. Big decision for a woman who had no money of her own, none. We think maybe her brothers said, oh, go on Jane get it published, and if you're really stuck, we'll help you out.

So in 1811 'Sense and Sensibility, by a Lady' was published, it did not have by Jane Austen on the cover, and she wanted to keep it a secret that she was writing these novels. Eventually, one of her brothers was so proud of her, he couldn't keep the secret anymore, and she was really cross when he let out the secret. But for most of her writing live, people did not know the name of the author who was writing these books. It did reasonably well. It didn't run at a loss. She made a bit of money from it over 100 pounds. So she was very pleased. And of course, she wanted to earn more from the writing of her novels.

So she then decided that she would get out a book called 'First Impressions', the one that her father had written about to the publisher years ago. She would retitle it 'Pride and Prejudice'. Again, we don't know what changes got made from that original version, but she sent it off to a publisher. And in 1813, the world became a better place in which to live because people could read 'Pride and Prejudice'. It has been filmed more than any of her other novels. Sequelled, prequelled, adapted, turned into cartoon versions, zombies have been added, there a pornographic. If you can dream up anything that has been done to 'Pride and Prejudice', I'm sure it has happened somewhere out there. It is her most famous book, generally the one that I think people should read first, it's a wonderful introduction to Jane Austen. And I can only say that if you have never read 'Pride and Prejudice', well you really haven't lived. You've got to do something about that as soon as possible. So it sold very nicely indeed.

And then of course, there was a wonderful day when Colin, as Mr Darcy emerged from that pond, and every female heart beat harder and quite a few male ones as well. That shirt recently sold at an auction in England for 25,000 pounds, and it had a hole in it, so they hadn't mended the hole. And I believe it's going on display in some museum. But it became an iconic moment in television. And every film producer since then has felt obliged to put a wet shirt moment in somewhere. Whether he's chopping wood in the rain or he's swimming or whatever it might be, the wet shirt moment has become seriously important.

So she then got on with writing a book that she was not revising from a previous novel. And she wrote the book that we Janites most love to argue over. It is her most controversial novel. I think it's the second greatest novel ever written. I absolutely adore it.

You've got to reread it. A critic that I heard giving a talk at the Global Jane Austen Conference in Southampton a month or so ago, said that Jane Austen is actually the very first writer to write books that demand rereading, that need to be reread to be fully appreciated. And that there are things that you might fail totally to pick up on a first reading that you are only ever going to get on a rereading because that's the way the book has been designed. And 'Mansfield Park' demands to be reread very frequently.

It's got a controversial hero and heroin. It hasn't been filmed as often as the others or some of the others, but it is a rich, deep, complex, psychological, thought provoking and utterly, utterly brilliant book. So if you haven't read 'Mansfield Park', rectify that as soon as you can.

So this is the tiny table on which she wrote her books on little pieces of paper. We don't have the manuscripts of the original novels except for the cancelled chapter of 'Persuasion', which I'll mention later. With usually homemade ink, a quill pen, no cutting and pasting, no deleting or saving different draughts. Everything had to be thought about very carefully before she put the pen to paper.

So she liked, the door into the room, had a bit of a squeak on its hinges. She didn't want that fixed because she liked warning that somebody was coming in. And she could quickly hide what she was writing with a book or more paper or whatever it might be. So this is a sacred object to people who love Jane Austen. We gaze at this table. We think of the masterpieces that were written on it. It is hugely important.

And here you can see the little drawing room at Chawton Cottage where she lived with her mother, her unmarried sister, Cassandra had briefly been engaged and the young man had died. So she never married. And they had another single woman, a very close family friend who came to live with them as well. And they all shared expenses.

Jane we know played the piano in the mornings. She seems to have felt that it was good, she wasn't a great pianist, but it was good time for her to sort of think about her books. Maybe it relaxed her a bit and she could then think of what she was going to do in her writing that day. Some lovely editions in that bookshop, a bookshelf there, which belonged to her father, George Austen.

Now finally, as Jane Austen began to keep writing and the books were, they were never best sellers, they were sort of growing in popularity and she'd earned by this time a reasonable amount. She altogether earned, I think it was 684 pounds, 13 shillings and something pence in her lifetime. So not a vast amount, but her brother, by this time had let out the secret.

And as a result of this, the Prince Regent, the future, George IV, who loved her novels and had set of them in every one of his palaces. He heard about her and it ended up that she met with his librarian, a rather pompous man who had an unfortunate resemblance to her own Mr Collins. But she met with this man and he said to her, oh, Ms. Austen, if you are writing another book, his Royal Highness would be very pleased if you would dedicate it to him.

Now, Jane Austen did not admire the Prince Regent or his morals or his love life or his spending, but when your future monarch says, please dedicate your next book to me, it's a little offensive to say no, and she hoped it would improve the sales of her novels. So she dedicated her next book to the Prince Regent. But she so overdoses with his Royal Highness, this and his Royal Highness, that you can sense the irony coming through in the dedication.

And the book that this very fortunate man had dedicated to him was the novel that I think is the greatest novel that the world has ever seen. And this is the copy that sits in the library at Windsor Castle. I dunno that the king and queen there today. Take it out every single day and stroke it lovingly as they should. But there they have that wonderful copy. So they had it bound with the prince's royal crest on the cover there on the spine.

To me, 'Emma' is the perfect novel the more I read it, which is very frequently indeed, the more I come to worship this book. She didn't get a word in it wrong. Every single word is there for a purpose. The characters are so brilliant. No matter how many times you read it, you get anxious in case Emma and Mr Knightly don't get together at the end. And it's so wonderful when they do. It's got the immortal Ms Bates, every one of us knows a Ms Bates. You've all been stuck on the end of the phone with somebody who never stops talking. We all know Ms Bates, and she's there in 'Emma'.

To me, it is a totally brilliant book, and the world would be a much sadder place if it didn't have 'Emma' in it. So on Jane Austen's actual birthday this year, I will be opening 'Emma'. I don't much mind what page it falls open at, and I will be revelling in this wonderful novel and in my own quiet, grateful way, celebrating the fact that Jane Austen wrote this complete masterpiece.

She then started her wonderful, probably her most romantic novel 'Persuasion'. She was by this time feeling a bit unwell. So she finished the manuscript, but she wasn't quite happy with the way she had ended it. And she put the manuscript aside, we think for a couple of months. Then she got it out and she rewrote the ending. She'd done quite a good job of finishing it, but she had not done the brilliant job with the scene in the White Heart Inn and Captain Wentworth writing that letter.

When I first gave my daughter 'Persuasion' to read, I knew she was getting near the end and she was getting to that letter. She was a teenager. She had a big smile on her face. She put the book down and she said to me, oh mom, I wish a man would write me a love letter like that. I think she's still waiting.

So 'Persuasion', she reworked the scene and what she had written originally has survived. So it's known as the cancelled chapters of 'Persuasion'. You can find it online and read it. Oerfectly good job, but not brilliant. So this is one of the very few cases where we can see her at work as a writer making changes to her manuscript. 'Persuasion' along with Northanger Abby' were only published, it was arranged by her brother Henry in the year after her death.

So she did begin a new novel before she died. And it's a fragment that we know as 'Sanditon'. If you've watched the television version the first five minutes, connect with Jane Austen, after that it goes one way in Jane Austen's book the other. But eventually she became too unwell to continue writing this. What could have been so new and interesting. We just don't quite know where it would've gone. Other writers have finished it off for her. And of course the television series has been very popular, but it was not written by Jane Austen. She was too weak now to be able to continue writing.

She travelled with her sister Cassandra to the beautiful Cathedral city of Winchester because she hoped a doctor there would be able to help her. And in this building today, owned by Winchester College at the tragically early age of 41, Jane Austen died in the arms of her sister Cassandra. As you can see, it's marked by a plaque. This year they have been opening specially for groups and 1000s of people have been to see and to stand in the room where probably the room where Jane Austen died. We're not 100% sure, but it is another very important place on the Jane Austen pilgrimage route. 

She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. We're not quite sure why we think her clergyman brother maybe pulled some strings. It was not because she was a famous novelist. In fact, the grave doesn't even mention the fact that she wrote novels. And the cathedral authorities had to add another plaque on the wall to say the Jane Austen buried down there is the one that wrote the books. They, of course, are also having an incredibly busy year. There's flowers on the grave, there's special exhibitions and a new statue of Jane Austen is going up. It might be up already, outside Winchester Cathedral.

So this seems to have been the end of Jane Austen's life. No more novels. The Victorians were not that interested in Jane Austen. They preferred Dickens, Trollop, Thackery, the Bronte's, George Elliot. So some of her books even went out of print for a very short time, and there just didn't seem to be a lot of interest.
Her memoir, her nephew wrote that memoir that I mentioned where, this one doesn't have the prettied up portrait, but it did in the original. And that came out in 1869 and was the first biography. There have been hundreds and hundreds of biographies of Jane Austen since that time. Some good, some truly terrible, but people just keep doing their versions of her life.

So really, she was a bit talked about. People were still enjoying the novels in a quiet way, but she was not Jane Austen superstar, which she certainly is in our world this year.

Now, what did Jane Austen do for the English novel? Well, she actually invented a very important literary technique called free indirect discourse or free indirect speech. Sometimes, and I don't have time to really explain it tonight, but you can look it up. It blends both first person and third person narration. So she's giving us third person narration and she's saying, Mr Collins did this or whatever. But suddenly, very seamlessly and without us even being aware that it's happening, we are entering the thought processes of that character. Even though we're getting it in third person. We are thinking like Lydia Bennett or whoever it might be. So she was the first writer to use this technique, and it's something we take for granted in novels today. And it would lead to writers like Flaubert and James Joyce. She was a total pioneer with this new technique.

So we might hear, for example, about Lydia in 'Pride and Prejudice', where she's thinking of Wickham. Now, this is third person narration. It's not Lydia talking. She's talking about Wickham as being described. But we are entering Lydia's mind and Lydia's thought processes.

"He was her Dear Wickham on every occasion. No one was to be put in competition with him. He did everything best in the world, and she was sure he would kill more birds on the 1st of September," excuse me, "than anybody else in the country."

So that's Lydia being stupid, competitive. We're entering Lydia's thought processes. And Jane Austen does it so subtly, so skillfully that most people are not even aware of this technique as they're reading her novels. And yet she was a total pioneer.

Oh, sorry, I've gone backwards there.

Now, I of course have written books about Jane Austen. She's my favourite author. Reading her books have totally changed my life. So I've done various books. Most of them you can still find as eBooks or you can get from me. But 'Jane and I' was my little sort of memoir about how Jane Austen had changed my life in the 200 years after her death. So writing about Jane Austen has been enormous fun.

Now, there have, of course been a truly phenomenal range of books about Jane Austen and sequels, many of them truly terrible. Colleen McCulloch's, I have to say was appalling. She said, she wrote it a quote to get up the noses of people who like Jane Austen. So no wonder I found it annoying. This is a minute fraction. There are these days with people self-publishing online, there are literally thousands and thousands of sequels, prequels, adaptations. So that gives you a very, very small selection of just the ones connected with 'Pride and Prejudice'. And of course, there are six novels that all get adapted, sequelled, prequelled, modernised, updatedm zombies. As I said, a bit of everything.

And of course there have been film versions. So the first famous 1, 1940 'Pride and Prejudice'. I love the fact that in this film version, Mr. Collins is not a clergyman because in 1940 it was felt a bit improper to laugh at clergyman. So Mr Collins becomes Lady Catherine's librarian. It was obviously fine to laugh at librarians in 1940, but not to laugh at clergyman. Now a big subtext of this film to persuade America to get involved in the war. So they were wanting to produce a sort of ye merry old England. This is what needs to be saved from the Germans. And so there was a huge subtext in this. The costumes I think were leftovers from 'Gone with the Wind'. They were all wrong, but some people say it was their very first Jane Austen movie and it's still their favourite. So it's got to place in people's hearts. And of course there have been so many since.

This gives you just a very small idea of some of the Mr Darcy's. Lewis Fiander was actually an Australian actor. So he was the only Aussie Mr Darcy. Lawrence Olivier, David Rintoul in the lovely 1980 version. Then Colin Firth, who for many of us is very hard to beat as Mr. Darcy. Others who have appeared in 'Bride and Prejudice', the Bollywood version. Matthew Mcfadyen, who was with Kiera Knightly, Elliot Cowan, who was in 'Lost in Austen', a sort of time travel film. And Daniel Gordh was in a sort of YouTube thing called 'The Lizzie Bennett Diaries'. And of course, next year we're going to get a new Netflix 'Persuasion' with a redheaded Mr Darcy. So let's wait and see what he is like.

So when the Colin Firth adaptation screened, the last episode of it, screened in Britain 12 million people sat down in front of their televisions to watch Elizabeth get engaged to Mr Darcy. That was more than the entire population of Great Britain when Jane Austen wrote the novel, how could she ever have imagined that people would see her characters in their own living rooms in some sort of visual form on a thing called a television? It truly is amazing.

Right now you can watch the really excellent 'Miss Austen'. It's on ABC iview at the moment based on a novel by Jill Hornby in four parts. Beautifully done. It's a sort of flashback thing with Cassandra in later life. We know of course, that she destroyed many of Jane Austen's letters, and we have so regretted that bonfire. But this is an excellent adaptation and something I'm sure you will enjoy watching. A new movie just come out this year 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life'. It's a French movie. It doesn't have a lot of Jane Austen in it and is forgettable but pleasant. So one of the many new things. Also on television, 'Jane Austen: The Rise of a Genius', a documentary about Jane Austen. So you can watch that. I think also ABC or it might be SBS, but that's another thing this year. And we have the new Netflix 'Persuasion' and we have a new film version in the works of 'Sense and Sensibility'. So it's not over yet the whole Jane Austen film explosion.

I mentioned the bank notes. So although a lot of people these days don't seem to have cash in their pockets, if they do, the chances are that there they have Jane Austen in their pockets. There had only been two women on English bank notes, Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, the penal reformer. So when Jane Austen was put onto the bank note, she replaced Charles Darwin, who adored her novels and knew them almost off by heart. So he would've been quite happy to have been replaced by Jane.

And this note was very controversial. It uses the pretty duck picture. The house that you can see in it belonged to her brother. It's not Chawton cottage. The quote is from Ms Bingley who's rather unreliable. And the picture of a lady sitting there writing, which maybe is Elizabeth Bennett, was drawn by an American. And people said, why didn't they have somebody English draw this picture for a bank note? So it has been controversial, but she's there on the bank note, which is wonderful. She was also put onto a coin. So she became the first person in British history to be on both a coin and a bank note simultaneously. So great excitement.

And these are some of the statues. The far one there is the new one that's going to go up or might already just be up in, maybe they're doing it on the birthday in Winchester. The other one is in Basingstoke that went up a few years ago. I think it's a rather lovely statue. And now there are some replicas of both of these in different places. I think having Jane Austen statues everywhere is a wonderful idea, but maybe I'm slightly biassed.

There are fantastic Jane Austen societies around the world, including the largest literary society in this country, the Jane Austen Society of Australia. Even if you can't come to all of our meetings in Sydney, talks are filmed and we publish versions of the talks. This year our huge conference, which is already booked out, is being held in Canberra at the end of October. And we've got some wonderful international speakers who are coming out to talk at that.

But Jane Austen societies are not just restricted to English speaking countries. I had a wonderful meeting once with the Jane Austen Society of Italy, and they told me they have about 10 different versions of 'Pride and Prejudice' to read because 10 different translators have done it, and each one has done a different version. So it's a strange concept for us to read different 'Pride and Prejudices', but they can. There's a big Jane Austen Society in the Netherlands. There's one in Brazil, of course, a huge one in America and Canada. One started this year in France. There's the Jane Austen Society of Spain, of Denmark, Sardinia, Argentina, Japan, Singapore, India, Belgium, and the list is going on and on and on. So people get together to discuss their favourite author, and they have an absolutely marvellous time.

So we've got members all over Australia, some in New Zealand, some overseas. We publish excellent journals. We always have a wonderful event at Christmas to celebrate Jane Austen's birthday. This year, of course is going to be very special indeed. And also an excellent conference every year. So we're a very active, fabulous society. I did put brochures out there, they've probably all gone already, but you can find information online about joining.

And of course, Jane Austen. Tourism is enormous. You can take the Jane Austen bus tour of Bath. That Jane Austen boat, sail Rivers in Europe. I got to see it once in France, which was very exciting. And I was madly taking photos as it went past. But this is a minute fraction. There's aeroplanes named for Jane Austen. And the whole Jane Austen tourist industry going to Lyme Regis, going to Steventon, going to Chawton, going to Bath, going to the film locations. It is today an absolutely enormous industry.

And this year, of course, it's going crazy. So this big global Jane Austen conference held in Southampton, huge conferences in America. Special exhibitions. This year is also Turner's 250th birthday. And so joint exhibitions of both Jane Austen and Turner have been held as well. So huge excitement and of course an enormous tourism industry connected with Jane Austen.

This is the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. It's going to be happening in a few weeks time, and I will be there for some of it. And they have an enormous costume parade through the streets of Bath. They get into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of people in Regency Dress. But then there's a group in America who say, well, we've got to beat them so this year we've got to get 10 more. So they keep alternating as to who's the top with the number of costumes. But these are people who love the novels, who, of course they're in beautiful Bath. They can promenade delightfully. And the Jane Austen tourism industry in Bath, which Jane Austen said she didn't like very much again, is absolutely huge.

The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, that's a wax out the front. She's much photographed. And of course there's a museum in Chawton, there's the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. So today, all these different places that you can visit, if you love the novels of Jane Austen.

The merchandise is truly extraordinary. Not only do you buy books, you can buy a Jane Austen bath duck. My granddaughter's are very fond of playing with the one I have in my bath. Jane Austen jigsaw puzzles, fridge magnets, board games, t-shirts, soaps, you can rub yourself all over with a Mr Darcy soap, cosmetics, toothpaste. My favourite of merchandise, which is a shocking pink night dress. It has written across the front of it, not tonight dear I'm reading Jane Austen. Cups, plates, sauces, the Jane Austen duck. You can even buy Jane Austen bandaids. So if you cut yourself, you can put a bandaid over the cup, which has, it is a truth universally acknowledged on it. Jane Austen, tea towels, wrapping paper, dating games, paper dolls, Christmas decorations, clothing, jigsaws, jewellery. You can buy a replica of the turquoise ring that Jane Austen wore. So you always know if somebody's got a ring like my turquoise one, that they're a Janeite and hundreds of thousands of people buy those rings. So the merchandise is extraordinary.

And you think if Jane Austen had known that these books would produce such incredible industry and ideas and merchandise that people want because they love the novels, I think she'd have had her hand down and said, please could some of the money have come to me. But of course, that did not happen.

Now, there is this very mistaken idea that Jane Austen is a writer for women. And while it's lovely to see some men here tonight, there are not enough. Jane Austen societies do tend to be much more female membership than they do male. And this is only an idea that has come about since the movies began where people thought, oh, it's all about girls going to balls and pretty dresses and carriages, and I'm not interested.

But before that, Jane Austen had just as many male admirers as she had female. Here you can see AA Milne who said that every time Elizabeth Bennett opened her mouth and spoke, he wanted to fall to his knees and worship her. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great playwright who was one of her contemporaries, oh, sorry, it wasn't AA Milne, it was Robert Louis Stevenson who said that about Elizabeth Bennett. AA Milne wrote a play called 'Ms Elizabeth Bennett', and he said, Jane Austen is the standard by which you judge people. If you are thinking of making out your will in favour of a young person who's going to be your heir, you ask him if he loves Jane Austen. If he says no, you change the will. If a young man has just got engaged, he asks the girl, do you love Jane Austen? If she says no, he says, please, can I have the ring back? So it was a real test of character.

Winston Churchill who read Jane Austen for therapy while running the country in World War II, EM Forster. And of course, women in Australia like our wonderful Dame Joan Sutherland, who was a huge fan of Jane Austen. So it's not just women who love Jane Austen, so many men have as well. The trouble is we need more of them and boys are not reading enough novels, and we need more people reading Jane Austen of both sexes of course.

That famous opening line, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Well, I've written a whole chapter in my book about 'Pride and Prejudice' just on this one opening sentence. You can hardly open a paper today without finding it is a truth universally acknowledged somewhere in it. It is one of the most famous opening sentences ever written.

Jane Austen has also, of course, inspired artists because although the first editions were never illustrated, over time, many different illustrators, some good, some bad, have had a go at illustrating her novels. And here are just a few examples. But literally hundreds and hundreds of illustrators have designed covers and done illustrations for the novels. So art has been hugely important with Jane Austen. She's had a big influence.

People have created replicas of her patchwork quilt. People have done all sorts of artistic works, little models of houses that she writes about in her fiction. The inspiration on artists has been enormous.

She has also inspired music. And this 'Mansfield Park' opera, which had rave reviews I sadly didn't get to. It was on Ballarat. So just a few months ago. It's had extremely good reviews. It's been very popular. So again, the influence on music. There have been many different musicals where you see Elizabeth and Darcy singing of their love to each other on a stage. There have been songs inspired by the novels, musical pieces.

And of course there have also been cartoonists. I'm quite fond of this one. I think it's rather fun. And you see it only works because we know that it is just so much more than that.

So Jane Austen's impact on the arts has been enormous, as in all of these other areas that I have been talking to you about.

So there you have those six novels. If only she had lived longer and we had so many more wonderful novels to enjoy. And they're such great novels that you simply have to go back to again and again and again. Let me just read you as a way of celebrating Jane Austen just a little tiny bit from 'Pride and Prejudice', and you should all know where this comes from.

"Elizabeth is sitting by herself, when to her utter amazement. She saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room in a hurried manner. He immediately began an inquiry after her health imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner and thus began. In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

Well, I'll be reading those lines on the birthday as well as my way of celebrating Jane Austen. And, oh, sorry, I should have shown you that before. So there he is looking anxious, making that proposal. And then of course we get the second one. And it's such happiness when they get together.

So there are so many reasons for reading Jane Austen. The quality of her language. In this day and age of mangled text messages and emojis, Jane Austen's novels have such completely perfect, beautifully written sentences and you never feel that the editor should have gone through with a red pen.

There's her humour. Turn on the news every night, and you see tragedy on our news screens. We need sometimes to laugh. And when you read Jane Austen, you laugh again and again and again.

There's the wonderful romance of the novels. You know hen Captain Wentworth writes that letter, when Henry Tilney and Catherine get together. These are great love stories and we need more love in our world, in our reading as well as our real world.

But most of all, I think for me with Jane Austen is her extraordinary understanding of human nature. She knew what made people tick. And in every page of her novels, you get that understanding. Whether it's finding somebody's a false friend or having a difficult employer like Lady Catherine de Berg, or needing to think about what your career is going to be like Edward Ferrars in 'Sense and Sensibility', or having very embarrassing parents like Mrs Bennett or all these issues.

And also coming to understand and know yourself. There's a wonderful moment, exactly halfway through 'Pride and Prejudice'. When Elizabeth has read Mr Darcy's letter explaining his proposal and all the accusations, she puts the letter down and she says, until this moment, I never knew myself. Jane Austen helps us to understand ourselves and other people.

So she truly is a great novelist who is contemporary, relevant, celebrated around the world this year and deserves to be read again and again. She is for me, the greatest novelist of all time.

And her 250th birthday is being celebrated globally, as I said, with balls talks, conferences, picnics, new books. There's a fabulous book, by the way, in the National Library's bookshop, 'Jane Austen in 41 Objects', which I can strongly recommend that you get published by the Bodleian Library, who's published my new book, pick up a flyer outside. There's going to be the statue, there's going to be new films, special events, documentaries. The list goes on and on and on.

I am extremely proud to be the president of what I think is the greatest literary society in the world, JASA, as we call it, the Jane Austen Society of Australia. I am incredibly fortunate to be a Janeite. My life has been enriched enormously. I cannot even begin to calculate or. I shudder to think of a life that doesn't have Jane Austen in it. So my life has been so enriched by her books. Let 2025, the 250th anniversary of her birth, be the year that your life too is changed by reading, rereading, Jane Austen. Thank you very much.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Thank you, Susannah for that absolutely fabulous lecture and particularly for the many ways, the many kind of spinoffs. When I was looking at all your merchandise, I was once given a little one of those deodorants you hang up in a room and it was Jane Austen. I still have it.

Susannah Fullerton: Everything.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: I still have it.

Susannah Fullerton: Jane asked some toothpaste.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Yes. So I'm sure she didn't even have toothpaste.

Susannah Fullerton: No, she didn't.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Now we've probably got time for just 2 questions from those in the room and people online. I'm sorry, we just can't, there's so many of you. We can't manage online questions, but if you've got any comments, send them to us when you send your survey reports in.
We've got one question here and I'm only going to take one more. So if you want to put your hand up for a second question. Okay. The lady in the yellow top here is going to be number 2. Okay. Number one question.

Audience member 1: Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. That was wonderful. I was just wondering because micro brain can't remember, you were saying Jane kind of slipped away and then suddenly everybody's reading her again. When did that happen?

Susannah Fullerton: It was sort of gradual. As I said, the Victorians really preferred some of the other writers, so she was not huge really until, once the 20th century started. She was enormously read by the troops in World War I. She was considered calming good for them, reminding them of the England for which they were fighting. All sorts of soldiers were given Jane Austen to read in the trenches. Then she was enormously taken down into the underground in World War II as reading during bombing raids on London.But really, I think it was the 1940 

movie with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier that really sort of began Jane Austen becoming bigger. And she has grown and grown. And then 1995 with the Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle 'Pride and Prejudice' caused a total explosion. And we're not seeing the end of it. It just all continues to this day. So she really is huge.Europeans and people in other languages had to cope with some very poor trans

lations. Coming to our Canberra conference in 2 months is a wonderful Norwegian scholar. She's written a book called 'Jane Austen Speaks Norwegian', and she looks at the translations in Scandinavian languages and how bad they were. When the French first translated 'Pride and Prejudice'. They thought Elizabeth was far too feisty and needed to be toned down considerably. So the French were getting, most people with translations, were getting really poor versions.

And translating irony is so hard. So they were losing the irony. And people in France and Germany and other places said, what was the fuss about this author Jane Austen? She says, boring as could be. But fortunately, there are now much, much better translations. And people in other non-English speaking countries are learning how completely wonderful her books are.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Fantastic. And last question,

Susannah Fullerton: Can I also just say, if you do have some questions you'd like answered, feel free to contact me through my website, which will give you all sorts of other information, and I'm very happy to answer questions via my website.

Audience member 2: Thanks, Susannah. Delightful talk. I'm just interested, the fact that Jane was part of a clergy family and in a sense because of the poverty not part of kind of the set that she's often writing about. How much would that have given her a capacity to be outside that and view it and be able to comment on it?

Susannah Fullerton: Well.

Audience member 2: I also just wondered if you had any particular character that she wrote about that was the model for the zombies.

Susannah Fullerton: Sorry, I missed that.

Audience member 2: I just wondered if there was a particular character that she wrote about that was the model for the zombies.

Susannah Fullerton: Oh no, I hate the zombies. I loathe the zombies. But no, fortunately there was no model for the zombies or for the pornographic versions or the religious versions or all the others.

So yes, she was from a clergy family. She was living in an era where clergymen did not have to really have a big sense of vocation. They didn't necessarily need to be deeply religious. I mean, her father was religious, but it was really who you knew and who could give you a living in the church that mattered a lot.

So when it comes to her novel, she portrays unbelievably stupid clergyman like Mr Collins. And then she also has lovely clergyman heroes like Henry Tilney. So it's hard to know how much, she said she did not draw on people she knew. She had a good enough imagination to make up her own characters. But inevitably, of course, she had suffered because of Ms Bates never stopped talking or she'd met a sporting boy like John Thorpe and 'Northanger Abbey'. She'd take bits from one person and bits from another, and she would create her own characters.

So look, she was one of eight children. One of them fancied himself as a writer, but he is only remembered today because he was Jane Austen's brother. Nobody would ever read a thing he wrote otherwise. So where her genius came from, suddenly out of that ordinary family living in the south of England, goodness only knows. It's the inexplicable nature of genius. Where did Beethoven suddenly develop the ability to write music and Leonardo to paint. And a genius somehow just is there in the right time and the right place with the right combination of circumstances. And fortunately with Jane Austen, it all worked and the result has been immortality. Thank you very much.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Thanks again to Susannah. And actually I'm now thinking I'd love to send Jane Austen and Mozart in a room together.

Susannah Fullerton: It's actually a book called 'Jane Austen and Mozart'.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres: Of course there is. Now. If you've enjoyed tonight, please do check our website for more great upcoming events. And as many of you are avid readers, you might be especially interested in the upcoming Ray Matthew lecture in early September where are celebrated author Christos Tsiolkas will speak about the idea of fence-sitting and its place in the modern world. It'll be a different kind of lecture. Thanks again, Susannah.

Susannah Fullerton: Thanks everyone.