Jane Austen & Crime: A Visit with Susannah Fullerton

"Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted." —Jane Austen, 1796, letter to Cassandra on arriving in London

Jane Austen was very aware of life’s darker side, and beneath the genteel polish and decorum of her novels lurks a world of adultery, theft, seduction, dueling, poaching, smuggling, and more. In this episode, guest Susannah Fullerton, president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, guides us through the sordid underbelly of Georgian and Regency society and explores how Austen uses various crimes and wrongdoing to advance her plots, shape her characters, and add color to her narrative landscapes.

Susannah Fullerton,a literary historian and author, has been president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA) since 1996. She has lectured extensively on Jane Austen’s life and novels, and her books include Jane Austen and Crime, A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction, and Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them, among others. Fullerton holds the Order of Australia Medal and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. She is also Patron of the Kipling Society of Australia, a founding member of the NSW Dickens Society and of the Australian Brontë Association, and a Lady Patroness of the International Heyer Society.

For an edited transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep35

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