Hello.
Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to romantic podcast that guarantees you a calm and entertaining transition into a great night's sleep.
Come with me as we immerse ourselves in a romantic journey to a time long since forgotten.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
Now close your eyes and feel yourself sink deeper into the support beneath you.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Jane Austen began the very year of her arrival at Chorlton to revise and prepare her old manuscript for publication.
She had found a publisher in a Mr.
Edgerton and she brought out in succession two novels.
The first,
Sense and Sensibility,
When she was 36 years of age in 1811,
14 or 15 years after it was rewritten at Steventon.
She got for it,
Though after how short or long an interval,
Or by what arrangement we are not told,
£150.
In her gay way,
She exclaimed at so large a reward for what had cost her nothing,
Save genius,
Ungrudging trouble and long patience.
Pride and Prejudice was published two years later in 1813.
In the meantime,
She began fresh work for Mansfield Park.
This was commenced the year before.
She had no separate study.
She worked in the family sitting room,
Undisturbed by the conversation or the various occupations going on around her and subjected to all kinds of interruptions.
She wrote at a little mahogany writing desk on small pieces of paper,
Which could be easily put aside or covered with blotting paper at the sight of visitors.
But it would be a great mistake to suppose she did not take the greatest pains with her work.
She wrote and rewrote,
Filed and polished,
Her own comparison for the process was painting on a few inches of ivory by repeated touches.
Pride and Prejudice attracted attention before long.
When the secret of the authorship became known,
In spite of the author's name being omitted on the title page,
Jane's experience was that of a prophet who has no honour in his own country.
Mr Austin Lee says that any praise which reached the author and her family from their neighbours and acquaintances was of the mildest description,
And that those excellent people would have considered Miss Jane's relatives mad if it had been suspected they put her in their own minds,
On a level with Madame d'Arbelay or even with far inferior writers.
A letter is given in which the novelist describes to her sister Cassandra,
In the liveliest terms,
Her feelings on seeing Pride and Prejudice in print.
She had got her own darling child from London.
The advertisement of it had appeared in the paper that day for the first time.
Eighteen shillings!
She should ask a guinea for her two next and twenty-eight for her stupidest of all.
A friend who was not in the secret had dined at Chawton Cottage on the very day of the book's coming,
And in the evening the family had fairly set to read it,
And half the volume to her without her having any suspicion.
She was amused,
Poor soul,
Observes the author,
And then adds,
She could not help you know with such characters to lead the way,
That she really does seem to admire Elizabeth.
I must confess,
I think her as delightful a creature has ever appeared in print,
And how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her,
At least,
I do not know.
In another letter,
Jane Austen refers to the second reading,
Which had not come off quite so well,
And had even caused her some fits of disgust.
She attributed the comparative failure to the rapid way in which her mother,
Who seemed to have been the reader,
Got on,
And to her not being able to speak as the characters ought,
Though she understood them perfectly.
When we recollect that the old lady was already seventy-four years of age,
We are rather astonished she found voice and breath for such a labour of love as reading aloud her daughter's novel,
Than that she was not able to give the dialogue a sufficient point.
Upon the whole,
The daughter winds up.
She was quite vain enough and well satisfied enough,
And the only fault which she found with her story was that it was rather too light and bright and sparkling.
It wanted to be stretched here and there with a long chapter of sense,
If it could be had,
If not of solemn nonsense.
Unquestionably,
The novelist was not plagued with diffidence,
Any more than with mock modesty.
Another letter,
A year later,
In 1814,
Supplies an account of a journey with which Jane Austen made post to London in company with her brother Henry,
Who took the manuscript of Mansfield Park with them.
It sounds as if the brother and sister were themselves the bearers of the new work to the publisher,
Who brought it out the same year.
Emma,
The heroine of which proved almost as great a favourite as Elizabeth Bennet with their author,
Was written and published two years later in 1816.
It was in connection with this,
The last book of hers,
Which Jane Austen lived to see come out,
That she received what her nephew calls the only mark of distinction ever bestowed upon her.
She was in London during the previous autumn of 1815,
The year of Waterloo,
Nursing her brother Henry through a dangerous illness.
Henry Austen was attended to by one of the Prince Regent's physicians.
To this gentleman it became known his patient's nurse was the author of Pride and Prejudice.
The court physician told the lady the Prince was a great admirer of her novels,
That he read them often and kept a set in every one of his residencies,
That he himself had thought it right to inform His Royal Highness that Miss Austen was staying in London,
And that the Prince had desired Mr Clark,
The librarian at Carlton House,
To wait upon her.
The next day Mr Clark made his appearance and invited Jane Eyre to Carlton House,
Saying he had the Prince's instructions to show her the library.
The invitation was of course accepted,
And in the course of the visit to Carlton House,
Mr Clark declared himself commissioned to say,
If Miss Austen had any other novel forthcoming,
She was at liberty to dedicate it to the Prince.
Accordingly,
Such a dedication was immediately prefixed to Emma,
Which was at that time in John Murray's hands.
Between February 1811 and August 1816,
Rather more than five years,
Jane Austen wrote her three later novels,
Mansfield Park,
Emma and Persuasion.
Pendants,
As it were,
To her three earlier novels,
Pride and Prejudice,
Sense and Sensibility,
And Northanger Abbey.
The author's second period of composition was as productive as her first,
If we take into consideration that Sense and Sensibility was simply an adaptation from a more juvenile story still.
Making allowance for the novelist's strong individuality,
There is an undoubted change in the tone.
There is greater tolerance and tenderness,
Especially noticeable in Persuasion.
More thoughtfulness and earnestness in Mansfield Park.
A perfection of composition which belongs peculiarly to Emma.
All the three novels are distinguished by greater polish of the simple,
Vigorous diction and a still more determined adherence to probability.
The later novels may lack some amount of what Jane Austen herself defined as the sparkle of Pride and Prejudice,
A sparkle which was often hard as well as bright.
But the notion of any falling off in power in the author would be absurd.
There was an ample equivalent for anything she might have lost in fresh spontaneousness by what she had gained in reflection and feeling,
And in delicacy of execution.
