Make this historical BBC drama your perfect cosy winter night binge watch
Make this historical BBC drama your perfect cosy winter night binge watch
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. On the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, BBC’s Miss Austen is a poignant tribute to the mysterious life of the author behind some of literature’s greatest love stories.
![[Jane Austen (PATSY FERRAN), Eliza Fowle (MADELEINE WALKER), Cassy Austen (SYNNOVE KARLSEN), Young Mary (LIV HILL)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_237571154-d109.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
Ill-fated love, gentlemanly chivalry, burning desire and societal intrigue are the cornerstone of many of Austen’s novels like Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. And the richness with which Austen pens these worlds, and the romances within them, makes them as relevant today as they were all those years ago – minus the corsets.
![[Alfred Enoch in Miss Austen]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_237571143-efba.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
But what we know about this prolific writer’s life outside her fiction is sparse largely due to her sister Cassandra who (two years before her own death) burned around nearly all the letters written by Jane to her closest confidants to preserve both Jane and her own legacy.
![[Cassy Austen (SYNNOVE KARLSEN), Mrs. Austen (PHYLLIS LOGAN), Jane Austen (PATSY FERRAN)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_237571145-071e.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
Since that fateful day, Cassandra has been painted as a villain in many Austen-loving circles and become the subject of immense fascination for historians trying to piece together Jane’s life and the motives Cassandra might have had to destroy such a treasure trove of insight.
Enter Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel, Miss Austen, which takes a leaf out of our classic author’s book and imagines what could have been in this private correspondence. As a nation, we love a literary mystery – whether pondering Agatha Christie’s 11-day disappearance or questioning whether Wuthering Heights’ Emily Bronte had a real-life love fuelling her impassioned words – and this is another to add to the fold.
