You are quite right—there was a famous romance between myself and a clergyman—or someone who united the sensibility of a clergyman with the stoutness of a military man. It seems to have transpired on the south coast on one of my exciting jaunts from Bath when father and mother had retired from the Steventon Rectory. Only, the favoured location is usually given as Sidmouth. And the point about it seems to be that it was only bruited abroad long after my early death in 1817 by my sister Cassandra, who told a niece. She herself had lost her fiancé when young, and he was a naval chaplain.

Commentators have thought that Cassandra was bringing me into line with her, as a beloved sister who should have had the sort of romance that Anne Elliot had in Persuasion, my last completed novel, in which my heroine had ‘learned romance as she grew older’. Exciting parts of Persuasion are set at Lyme, on the far edge of Dorset where Devon begins, and I let myself go with some romantic writing about it. The poet Tennyson visited it in order to see ‘the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell’. So you might indeed visit Lyme on this basis, possibly even write about it as a literary location –John Fowles, who sounds a bit like Tom Fowle, Cassandra’s fiancé, set The French Lieutenant’s Woman there, if you like that sort of thing.

You might write a dissertation on the importance of (some) places to me, or Lyme in particular with special reference to Persuasion, or investigate that story of the romantic clergyman as a piece of quasi-biographical myth-making which is involved with people’s responses to and desires for me, partly as a result of responding to my novels, of course. Look up the relevant spots in biographies by David Nokes, Claire Tomalin and Park Honan, e.g.—look up the incident in the indexes, don’t read all the way through unless you so desire! Visit Lyme, read Persuasion—especially the romantic evocation of the town—and you may find a dissertation that way. Or what about the function of Bath as a literary location in the novels (Persuasion again and Northanger Abbey –now there’s a contrasting pair for you)? Have a great time anyway!

With best wishes.

Jane austen.

Later, scholars decided that this reading of my letter was a misreading, but the mood or tone of the book was indeed suggested by another phrase in my correspondence at the time of writing Mansfield to the effect that ‘wisdom is better than wit and will certainly have the laugh in the long run’. It seems to sum up Mansfield Park's serious tone and what some have seen as its prejudice against the witty characters, Mary and Henry Crawford, the amusing but slightly corrupt ‘intruders’, with their emphasis on fashionable society, with its airs and graces, its attention to wealth and worldliness, and the values of metropolitan London in particular.

This ‘wisdom is better than wit’ theme also made the book seem like something of a riposte to my previous novel, Pride and Prejudice, which I elsewhere described as ‘too light, and bright, and sparkling’. In particular, the ironic playfulness of the enchanting Elizabeth Bennet in that novel seems to be re-embodied in the person of Mary Crawford. It is made clear that she would not make a good wife for Edmund, despite his fascination with her and her attractions to the qualities which make him so very unlike his elder brother Tom, the richer man as the inheritor of the estate, but wayward and unsteady in character. Mary regrets Edmund’s commitment to the church but is attracted to his unusual seriousness as, in due course her brother Henry is to the goodness and gravity of the self-effacing Fanny.

In its conclusion the book’s narrator, with sparkling irony, describes the defeat and exclusion of those characters who ‘cannot be serious’, or not in the right way, including Mary and Henry, but also Maria Bertram, who eloped from her marriage with dull dog Rushworth--with Henry Crawford, who has sported with her affections since the play, Lover’s Vows was rehearsed at Mansfield in the absence of the intimidating landowner Sir Thomas Bertram. In the end, despite her brief exile to Portsmouth, Fanny finds her status at Mansfield is assured as she is loved and valued by both Lady Bertram and Sir Thomas, and happily marries Edmund at last. Critics have complained that the victory of wisdom over wit ignores the good qualities of the lively characters, the questionable ethos of Mansfield Park itself, involved with imperialism through Sir Thomas’s Antiguan estate, and points out, or up, the particularly cruelty of the treatment of Maria Bertram, never again received at Mansfield after her understandable elopement from her foolish husband. Similarly, critics have wondered whether Fanny might not have been even better employed in ‘reforming’ her ardent admirer Henry Crawford, with his many responsibilities on his Norfolk estate, than in ‘supporting’ an Edmund who already seems to know so well what he is ‘about’. But ‘wisdom is better than wit’ seems to entail the soberer and juster conclusion, and a large class of readers particularly enjoy the sight of Fanny ‘getting her man’ at the last, especially as she has had so very much to ‘try’ her in the events leading up to the novel’s conclusion.

With best wishes.

Jane Austen.

Sadly I was not myself involved in the production of Persuasion 1995 and therefore at present I may only answer one level of what turns out to be a two level question. Whilst the film music is based around arrangements of Bach and (in particular) Chopin, the Italian Aria (in G minor) along with the theme music and a piece referred to as 'Tristesse' is credited to the contemporary composer Jeremy Sams. The aria is a rather good pastiche of the Italian opera tradition which I was familiar with (as opposed to Chopin’s works which were slightly after my time). Unfortunately I can’t tell you whether this work was inspired by a particular composer, or indeed derived from a particular piece -composers enlisted for adaptations tend to take as much credit as possible, so their inspirations are unlikely to be noted anywhere.

That music -at least in sheet form -along with music from other adaptations is available for sale if you are particularly fond of it eg here -using my name quite shamelessly. Not that I have anything against good music of course [earlier answers].

I think I may investigate this a little further to satisfy my own curiousity. If I discover any more detail about the work’s origins I will add to this answer and let you know.

with best wishes,

Jane Austen

There is no doubt that Pride and Prejudice is structured to reflect social arrangements. Of these, the most tellingly relevant is that of the entail affecting the Bennet property of Longbourn. Whatever the original purpose of the legal arrangement known by this name, the effect here is to disinherit a family of girls. Had Mr Bennet had a son, he would not have had the prospect of pompous, stupid, and in a real sense corrupt Mr Collins taking over his residence. Apparently such legal doings were not uncommon. They reinforce a sense of patriarchy, of female disempowerment. Apparently, too, Mr Bennet should have taken more active steps to mitigate the effects of a possible scenario in which he would have had only daughters to look after, and this partly explains his palpable aggressivity towards the youngest girls in his family, Kitty and Lydia. They disappoint him merely by being female, and he then fails to secure their respect or love.

The fact of the entail, which is a metonym of patriarchal arrangements, makes Mrs Bennet quite rational in her hysteria and ‘over’anxiety, and Mr Bennet irrational in his apparently imperturbable stance -which is ruptured by Lydia’s elopement with Wickham, which is in turn partly his fault. The entail also makes more understandable Mrs Bennet’s unsubtle approach to the idea of the approach of rich men who will take daughters off her hands, relieve family anxieties, and recover a sense of status and respect from the neighbours -the Hertfordshire crowd of jeerers and sneerers who seem to be rather pleased that Lydia has made fools of them all by eloping with George Wickham. Ironically, this helps the cases of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, with whom we are encouraged to identify, as the powerful landowner and aristocrat in all but name, Mr Darcy has already had to rescue an eloping fifteen-year-old from Wickham’s clutches -his own sister, Georgiana.

The novel reflects an extremely stratified society in which people are always in danger of being deemed ‘not good enough’ to appear in certain social contexts, even if they personify actual goodness, as Elizabeth considers her sister Jane to do. This tension between sterling personal qualities and other ways of ‘valuing’ people based on hard cash, ownership of land, or less brutally tangible claims to status underlies the structure of the novel. One of these is the idea of ‘gentility’, which Mr Bennet can claim, but the family are beset by social minus factors which in various ways erode their status and cloud the prospects of Jane’s eventual union with Charles Bingley, the trade-enriched young gentleman and friend of Darcy, with his imposing lineage and estate of Pemberley, who marries Elizabeth. Elizabeth ironically triumphs because she has a huge self-respect and integrity which despises the ethos which sees girls pursuing men for money and a ‘prudent settlement’ alone, and Mr Darcy appreciates this, despite the fact that it leads her to reject him -but fortunately, only at the first time of asking.

With best wishes,

Jane Austen