Our Romance with Jane Austen

Critics at Large | The New Yorker · Dec 25, 2025 · 50m

Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her death—her name is now synonymous with the period romance. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz choose their personal favorites from her œuvre—“Emma,” “Persuasion,” and “Mansfield Park”—and attempt to get to the heart of her appeal. Then they look at how Austen herself has been characterized by readers and critics. We know relatively little about Austen as a person, but that hasn’t stopped us…