Jane Austen fans honor British novelist's legacy 250 years after her birth

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: On this Valentine’s Day, if you’re looking for love, may we suggest you go dancing? After all, as the British romantic novelist Jane Austen wrote in her most popular work, “Pride and Prejudice,” to be fond of dancing is a — quote — “certain step towards falling in love.”

This year, Jane Austen fans are celebrating 250 years since her birth, and in her homeland of England, they’re expecting a tourist boom, as special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Actor: Mr. Darcy, allow me to present this young lady to you.

Actor: She is the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld.

Actor: She’s not handsome enough to tend to me.

Malcolm Brabant: In this jubilee year, expect a resurgence of “Pride and Prejudice,” widely considered to be Jane Austen’s finest creation.

Kathryn Sutherland, University of Oxford: She’s probably standing shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare.

Actress: The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man who might I can truly love.

Kathryn Sutherland: They are works packed with emotional intelligence of the kind we get from Shakespeare, in fact.

Actress: You are the loveliest girls I ever set eyes on. Can you not get them married Mrs. Dashwood?

Kathryn Sutherland: She also was a pioneer of the novel. She developed the psychological novel.

Malcolm Brabant: Kathryn Sutherland is professor of bibliography and textual criticism at Oxford University and a leading authority on Jane Austen.

Kathryn Sutherland: She brought women into the novel in a probable and realistic way. Her achievements were huge.

Malcolm Brabant: But Austen’s genius wasn’t properly recognized until long after her death. Jane Austen’s six novels only earned her the grand total of between $70,000 to $80,000 in today’s money.

Actress: Look at them, five of them without dowry. What’s to become of them?

Actor: Perhaps we shall drown some of them birth.

Malcolm Brabant: Her characters were consumed with the need to achieve financial security. And yet Jane Austen herself died in relative poverty. How ironic that she spawned an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Visitors are expected to flock to this house, where Austen succumbed to illness at the age of 41. Richard Foster from Winchester College is preparing a commemorative exhibition.

Richard Foster, Winchester College: Three days before her death, she dictated a poem to her sister, Cassandra . So even then she was well enough to carry on writing. And it’s a very funny poem.

Malcolm Brabant: Despite being impoverished and relatively obscure, Austen was buried in one of Europe’s grandest cathedrals.

Canon Roly Riem, vice-dean, Winchester Cathedral: It’s remarkable that Jane is buried in this cathedral because you wouldn’t expect that to happen. But she is here and she’s a focus of an amazing worldwide devotion to her and her writings and all that she’s left us.

Malcolm Brabant: Canon Roly Riem is vice-dean of Winchester Cathedral.

Canon Roly Riem: When we have had a book to remember her, the last big anniversary we have had, they wrote sometimes pages in it just saying how much Jane had changed their lives, the difference it made to their outlook or even their career.

Lizzie Dunford, Director, Jane Austen’s House: This house, Jane Austen’s house, is hugely significant.

Malcolm Brabant: Thirty miles from Winchester is the village of Chawton that was a haven for the young writer.

Lizzie Dunford runs this 19th century time capsule.

Lizzie Dunford: So it’s a huge period of intense creativity that is made possible and enabled by the creative sanctuary, the security that this house gives. So it has that intense literary significance.

Malcolm Brabant: And it’s in the dining room that Austen’s disciples gaze upon the wellspring of her creativity, the writing table.

Lizzie Dunford: Austen described her novels as her darling children, as her children. They come from this, from their nursery and their cradle, out into that wider world, and they’re now read in every corner of the world.

Malcolm Brabant: Another stop on the Austen trail is Bath, where Actress Lauren Falconer portrays the heroine of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Lauren Falconer, Actress: Jane Austen is an incredible female writer and she was so ahead of her time in what she was writing. I play Elizabeth Bennet, who is an obstinate, headstrong girl, but I also think Jane was very subtle in the ways that she was trying to make changes for women in her time period.

Malcolm Brabant: Each summer, thousands of aficionados flock to Bath for the annual Jane Austen Festival.

Tourist chief Catherine Davies says this year’s event will be spectacular.

Kathryn Davis, Managing Director, Visit West: I think it’s an opportunity for people to dress up, to feel that they’re part of history maybe, and with a backdrop like this that looks like a film set, what better place to do it in?

Malcolm Brabant: Actor Martin Williamson understands why, in these turbulent times, Austen devotees seek to escape into her world.

Martin Williamson, Actor: It seems gentler then, a much gentler time, not as complicated as it is living today. But, of course, it was a very strict social structure, so if you were born at the bottom of the pile, there was no way you could really ascend like today. Especially in places like the United States, you can make it. You’re encouraged.

Malcolm Brabant: For vlogger and podcast host Izzy Meakin, the jubilee festival will be the highlight of the year.

Izzy Meakin, Podcast Host, “What the Austen?”: You read her books and you can recognize people in your own life, so it doesn’t matter that these were written 200-plus years ago.

You can still see people that you know. You’re like, wow, I know someone like that all or I can see myself in those characters. I think that’s the real — a real testament to her writing and how incredible she was.

Malcolm Brabant: That enthusiasm is shared in Oxford University’s august Bodleian Library, where Kathryn Sutherland examines Austen’s only surviving manuscript of the novel she never finished.

Kathryn Sutherland: She seems to work very frugally. As you will see, she writes onto small pieces of paper and she writes to the very limits of that paper, so she leaves very little space. So her assumption is that this is a draft that’s going to work first time.

Malcolm Brabant: The manuscript was bought at auction in 2011 for over a million dollars to preserve for the nation.

Kathryn Sutherland: Oh, it’s magical. It’s absolutely magical just to think that Jane Austen touched this, that Jane Austen worked on this. It’s a very intimate experience. A manuscript is like a writer’s fingerprint, or it’s like getting inside the laboratory and finding out how they create.

Actress: Is he handsome?

Actress: He’s single.

Actress: Oh, my goodness. Everybody behave naturally.

Actor: Mr. Collins at your service.

Malcolm Brabant: Given she was ahead of her time, how would Jane Austen have navigated the 21st century’s complex romantic minefields with all their permutations?

Izzy Meakin: I think sometimes it can seem like it’s much more complicated now.

Zack Pinsent, Costume Designer: Here’s to you. And here’s to me. May we never disagree. But if we do, to hell with you. And here’s to me.

Izzy Meakin: But I think something that Jane Austen would really celebrate is the choices we have now, the freedom when it comes to love. We can love how we want to and we can love who we want to.

Malcolm Brabant: After all, the lesson that Austen imparts is that the path to true love requires overcoming pride and prejudice.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Malcolm Brabant in Chawton, Hampshire.