She wrote one of the most famous romances of all time but we still don’t know for certain if Jane Austen ever got to experience a great love story of her own.
It is a topic that is at the centre of a new novel which imagines the author falling in love during a summer holiday at the seaside.
Paula Byrne, an Austen scholar, was inspired to write because the question she is most frequently asked about the author is “did she ever fall in love?”.
While previous discussion of Austen’s romantic life tended to focus on her entanglement with Irish barrister Tom Lefroy, depicted in the film , Byrne believes this was just a brief flirtation.
The English academic turned her attention instead to a romance with an unnamed man who Austen met while staying with her family at the English seaside town of Sidmouth in the summer of 1801, when she was 25.
The author’s sister Cassandra had mentioned the encounter to her niece Caroline many years after Jane’s death.
“I was rereading , and I started thinking again could she have written about heartbreak so beautifully if she had no idea what it was like?” says Byrne.
“And I thought, ‘God, I’ve really not paid enough attention to this story’. I had already done the biography so I decided to fictionalise this episode to see if I could bring it to life.”
is a captivating blend of fact and fiction, underpinned by real life characters and themes of the time, from war to the anti-abolitionist movement, which along with the dialogue, gives it an authentic feel.
The engaging plot is typically Austenesque, with two suitors vying for Jane’s attentions.
Samuel Rose is a lawyer and a well-drawn mix of Austen’s much-loved leading men, from the proud Darcy to the principled Knightley and kind Colonel Brandon; while naval captain Peter Parker, like Wickham and Willoughby, isn’t all that he appears.
“I did a lot of research because I wanted that concrete detail — when we know so little about Jane Austen, I wanted to make sure the things that we do know about other characters could be brought to life,” says Byrne.
“It is an undertaking to write about Austen because her intelligence and wit is so intimidating that you just think, how dare I imagine this?
“But I really enjoyed the challenge of that — what kind of man would she be likely to fall in love with?”
Austen’s longevity is remarkable and the fascination with her and her work shows no signs of abating.
Her cultural impact is being felt more than ever this year, with the celebrations leading up to the 250th anniversary of her birth in December.
She has been embraced by the TikTok generation and the screen adaptations of her novels keep coming.
Byrne herself has also been working on a series for BBC Radio 4 featuring well-known authors talking about Austen’s influence.
Why does her work continue to resonate so much with modern audiences?
“She’s just an ever unfolding revelation. She still feels very contemporary, in so many ways,” says Byrne.
“You have these fully-rounded characters that come to life and spring off the pages.
“A lot of people like the way that she’s exploring the female experience; how her heroines are flawed and they all have the capacity for growth.”
Austen’s work has not wanted for screen adaptations, some more successful than others — the transposition of Emma to LA in became a much-loved classic while the recent version of featuring Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliot breaking the fourth wall -style was a spectacular misfire.
While many Austen fans believe the 1995 screen versions of , starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and , with an Oscar-winning screenplay from Emma Thompson, will never be improved on, further adaptations of both are in the works.
Given the seemingly unquenchable thirst for all things Austen, does Byrne worry that the beloved author will be reduced to a content machine?
“There’s always that problem. I’m not a purist — I love , it’s a brilliant updating and I know Jane Austen would have loved it and found it very funny.
“When the films are done well, they can be really important gateways, because I think some children do struggle with the language as it is unfamiliar to them.
“On the other hand, the danger is that I see even scholars who are quoting from the films [rather than the books].”
Byrne says she is encouraged by the feedback she receives on Austen from younger people. The view of her books as romances to be enjoyed only by women has also shifted over the years, she says.
“My sons did at school, and they loved it. My youngest son said it was funniest novel he had ever read.
“And when you see boys quoting Jane Austen on TikTok, it is brilliant.
“I have done a lot of podcasts with younger women and I love the fact that they really know their Jane Austen and they really value her.
“It all helps to spread and keep her name alive — you just always want people to go back to the books. The books can give you all the things that the adaptations can’t give you.”
While Jane may not have experienced the traditional happy ending of marriage, there is no doubt that there was no shortage of love in her family life.
Byrne revisited the surviving letters that Jane wrote to Cassandra, her sister and soulmate, when she was working on .
“The letters are very intimate because they were written to Cassandra for whom she opened her heart.
“They are very funny, irreverent and honest and you do get a real sense of what she was like as a person,” says Byrne.
As someone who has been studying Austen for decades and has written an acclaimed biography titled , Byrne is well-equipped to imagine what the author was like. If she could meet Austen, what would she ask her?
“I’d love to know, ‘did you find your Mr Darcy?’. Because we all want to know that, we just can’t help it.
“I would also love to ask her about her writing, the process of her work, but the nosy part of me would also be like, ‘come on, who was this gentleman you met in Sidmouth?’.”
We may never know if Austen, like her characters, enjoyed the rush of falling in love. But beyond doubt is the gift that she has bestowed on generations of readers who have been smitten by her books.
