Lona Manning's blog

CMP#238 A BBC documentary(?) on Austen

12/9/2025

CMP#238 Rise of a Genius: An incompetent piece of BBC agit-prop

Revolution is literally in the air

   My article about Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius is now live at the History Reclaimed website. It's an honour to have my contribution to the debate about the BBC shared at a site founded by so many eminent historians and academics. Below is additional material that I did not include in my article for reasons of length.
  In an earlier post, I decried a BBC documentary on Shakespeare that astonished me for the amount of misinformation it conveyed. Now it's time to clutch my pearls over the same treatment meted out to Jane Austen.  I didn’t see this documentary when it aired in the UK in May, but I recently found it on an online streaming service
   If you are in need of another eye-opening lecture on slavery, colonialism, empire, class prejudice and economic injustice, set to a soundtrack of driving violins, this is the program you've been looking for. If, however, you assumed a program called "Rise of a Genius" would offer an explication of Austen’s wit and her unique talents, you will be disappointed. You can get a sample of the mood of this program by viewing this preview here.
The BBC has given us many shows on Jane Austen over the years, on both radio and television, and if you stack these older programs up against this one, you will see how respect for serious scholarship has been replaced with—whatever this is. If this is the best that the BBC could muster for Austen’s 250th birthday, then the BBC is a hollowed-out shell, a travesty of a mockery of a sham...

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CMP# 211 Book Review: Jane Austen's Bookshelf

3/11/2025

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.
This post is a review of the newly-published Jane Austen's Bookshelf which discusses some of the better-known female writers that Austen read. My blog focusses on more obscure authors, some of whom enjoyed great success in their day and were read until well into the 19th century, such as Elizabeth Helme, Barbara Hofland, and Elizabeth Meeke. For more, see the "authoresses" link at the upper right hand side of the page.

CMP#211 Eight pioneering women writers who were on Jane Austen's bookshelf

So where are you in your journey from Austen fan to Austen superfan? Have you worked out the Austen family tree? Do you smile politely when someone quotes Austen's "little bit of ivory" at you, because you've already heard or read it a hundred times? Have you read any or all of the novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey? Did you know that "Lover's Vows," the play performed by the young people in Mansfield Park, was a real play?
In my opinion, Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney is geared toward people who are not far along in their Austen journey, but are ready and eager to learn more. On the other hand, well-informed Janeites might find that it covers familiar territory, while others might be bemused by the proposition that Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney are forgotten writers whose connection to Austen was waiting to be rediscovered.
I don't mean that as a criticism of a well-written and deeply researched book, which this is. For someone wanting to learn more about Austen and her literary world, Jane Austen's Bookshelf is packed with revelations for the reader (I'll get back to that later) and a valuable guidebook to the literature of her time.

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CMP#199 Is Lydia a Feminist Rebel or a Victim?

8/8/2024

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CMP#199 Lydia Bennet: rebel or victim?
Is Lydia Bennet a feminist rebel or a victim of grooming? How should we feel about her marriage to Wickham?
Jane Austen portrays Lydia as laughing and joyful when she elopes in Pride and Prejudice. She refuses to be parted from Wickham, even though they are not married. Her sister Elizabeth deplores Wickham and his “wretched” character, but she speaks to Jane not of his unforgettable conduct, but of “their conduct.” She also says to herself: “how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.” [Emphasis added]
Elizabeth thinks her sister, even at 15, should have known better. She comforts herself that at least Lydia thought she was eloping to get married: “she was serious on the subject of their journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her side a scheme of infamy." Austen also tells us that Mrs. Bennet was not “humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.” Because of course both Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, as Lydia’s parents, must be thought of as being in large measure responsible for her faulty character.
Still, Austen does not absolve Lydia on account of her age and inexperience, and neither does Elizabeth. No doubt we'd react to a 15-year-old running off with a grown man differently today and assign blame differently...

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CMP#192 Gertrude, who elopes and repents

6/18/2024

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“Oh, these faintings, so often, and then again directly, will soon do her business, I warrant, poor honey!” said Mrs. O’Flarty; but “but hould, hould a bit, now she is coming to herself, and now she sighs…”
-- the Irish landlady in Black Rock House

CMP#192 Black Rock House: a psychological thriller from 1808
by Mrs. E.G. Bayfield: Synopsis with Spoilers

Pop quiz: which events in Black Rock House cause our heroine, Gertrude Wallace, to faint dead away?

When the man she loves pressures her to elope with him.
When her husband leaves the ballroom with a beautiful woman, leaving her behind, seven months' pregnant.
When she realizes that her husband is having an affair.
When her husband threatens to blacken her name so he can divorce her.
When she hears her husband has killed a man in a duel.
When she’s reunited with her father who had cast her off.

If you answered: “all of the above,” you’re right! Poor Gertrude suffers a great many travails in these three volumes—the book is punctuated with the thud of Gertrude hitting the carpet. Yet, she is a plucky girl--she does stay upright and conscious when she’s abandoned by her soldier husband and left behind, first in Bath and then in Ireland, when she’s in two storms at sea, when she’s caught in a flood, and when she's kneeling beside her husband’s “mangled corpse” after he kills himself. Many tears are shed of course...

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CMP#238 A BBC documentary(?) on Austen

CMP# 211 Book Review: Jane Austen's Bookshelf

CMP#199 Is Lydia a Feminist Rebel or a Victim?

CMP#192 Gertrude, who elopes and repents

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