Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • Magazines

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Biographies
  3. Literary biographies

Read and listen for free for 42 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.5(2)

The Genius of Jane Austen : Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood

'I relished every page … This is the best book on Jane Austen I have ever read’

Spectator

'Compelling … a delightful and engrossing book … Byrne’s passion is nothing if not persuasive’

Sunday Times

Was Jane Austen a woman of prim manners and genteel calm? Or someone who behaved outrageously, filled with sharp wit and wild comedy?

Jane Austen loved the theatre. She learned much of her art from a long tradition of English comic drama and took joyous participation in amateur theatricals. Her juvenilia, then Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma were shaped by the arts of theatrical comedy.

Her admiration for drama’s dialogue, characterisation, plotting, exits and entrances is why she has been dramatised so successfully on screen in the last twenty years – and these versions are at the centre of her continuing fame, culminating in her celebration on £10 note.

Austen expert and author of The Real Jane Austen, Paula Byrne looks at stage adaptations of Austen’s novels (including one called Miss Elizabeth Bennet by A. A. Milne) to modern classics, including the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility, and the phenomenally brilliant and successful Clueless, The Genius of Jane Austen presents an Austen not of prim manners and genteel calm, but filled with wild comedy and outrageous behaviour.


Author:

  • Paula Byrne

Narrator:

  • Antonia Beamish

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 11 h 45 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Biographies
  • Literary biographies
  • Culture
  • Literature

More by Paula Byrne

Skip the list
  1. The Real Jane Austen : A Life in Small Things

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  2. Hardy Women : Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  3. Some covers are only visible when logged in

    Perdita : The Life of Mary Robinson

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  4. Mad World : Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  5. The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  6. Mirror, Mirror

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  7. Look to Your Wife

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  8. Kick : The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook
  9. Belle : The True Story of Dido Belle

    Paula Byrne

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. Jane on the Brain : Exploring the Science of Social Intelligence with Jane Austen

    Wendy Jones

    audiobook
  2. The Right Kind of White : A Memoir

    Garrett Bucks

    audiobookbook
  3. The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction : 50 North American Stories Since 1970

    Michael Martone

    book
  4. Jane & Me - My Austen Heritage (Unabridged)

    Caroline Jane Knight

    audiobook
  5. Jane Austen's Bookshelf : A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

    Rebecca Romney

    audiobookbook
  6. Virga & Bone

    Craig Childs

    audiobook
  7. Cry of Murder on Broadway

    Julie Miller

    audiobook
  8. The Jane Austen Handbook

    Margaret C. Sullivan

    audiobook
  9. I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry

    Susie Kelly

    audiobook
  10. The Jane Austen Remedy

    Ruth Wilson

    audiobook
  11. People vs. Donald Trump : An Inside Account

    Mark Pomerantz

    audiobookbook
  12. The Book of the Earthworm

    Sally Coulthard

    audiobook

  • 10 books

    Paula Byrne

    Paula Byrne is the author the bestselling biographies ‘Perdita’, ‘Mad World’, ‘The Real Jane Austen’, ‘Belle’, ‘Kick’ and ‘The Genius of Jane Austen’. She is founder and chief executive of ReLit, the Bibliotherapy Foundation, a charity devoted to the mental health benefits of reading. She is married to Sir Jonathan Bate and lives in Oxford.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5