Archive: Emma

Loading player...
Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His ninth choice is the episode on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, first released in November 2015. Austen described her leading character as "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Emma is one of Austen’s most popular novels and arguably her masterpiece, a brilliantly sparkling comedy of manners published in December 1815 by John Murray, the last to be published in Austen's lifetime. This followed Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814), with her brother Henry handling publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817).

With

Janet Todd
Professor Emerita of Literature, University of Aberdeen and Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge

John Mullan
Professor of English at University College, London

And

Emma Clery
Professor of English at the University of Southampton.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (first published 1975; Oxford University Press, 1988)

Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Richard Jenkyns, A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Claudia Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (University of Chicago Press, 1988)

Peter Knox-Shaw, Jane Austen and the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

David Monaghan (ed.), Emma (New Casebook Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)

Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

John Mullan, What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (Bloomsbury, 2012)

Bharat Tandon, Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation (Anthem, 2003)

Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (first published 1986; Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Janet Todd, The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

John Wiltshire, The Hidden Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

John Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.
1 Oct English United Kingdom Religion & Spirituality

Other recent episodes

Particle Accelerators

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the machines that are described as the world’s largest experiments: Particle Accelerators. A famous example of a Particle Accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider, a device which stretches for nearly 30km, deep beneath the ground in a tunnel between France and Switzerland. This enormous scale…
22 Oct 56 min

Archive: Erasmus

One of the most celebrated thinkers of the Renaissance, Erasmus (c1466-1536) is best known for his works of classical and religious scholarship, and for his infamous theological dispute with Martin Luther (1483-1546) over free will and the Church. In this archive episode, first released in February 2012, Melvyn Bragg and…
19 Oct 46 min

Thomas More's Utopia

In 1516, the publication of one small book would coin a new word and give rise to centuries of literature, theory, and thought. In his most influential work, the lawyer and Tudor politician Thomas More (1478-1535) described a seemingly perfect – but entirely fictional – island called Utopia. In 1535,…
15 Oct 59 min

Archive: The Measurement of Time

Misha Glenny chooses the first of his archive picks - bringing back classic conversations from the In Our Time archive, every Monday. Humans have tried to calculate, regulate, and measure time for thousands of years: from systems based on tracking sunrise and sunset, to the invention of increasingly precise mechanical…
12 Oct 46 min

Archive: Trinity

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His final choice is the Trinity, an episode first released in March 2014. The idea that God is a single entity, but one known in three distinct forms - Father, Son and…
8 Oct 44 min