It's Austen Chat's third anniversary, and we have a special treat for you this month!
We're delighted to share "Jane Austen: Material Girl," a lively conversation between authors Paula Byrne and Hilary Davidson, recorded at JASNA's 2025 Annual General Meeting last fall. Both have written extensively about the significance of material objects in Austen's life and work. In this episode, they explore the significance of ordinary items—toothpick cases, shawls, flannel waistcoats, and more—and the ways these objects carry symbolic meaning in Austen's novels.
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Paula Byrne is a best-selling biographer, literary critic, and novelist. She is the author of The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, which explores her life through the objects around her; The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood; and the novel Six Weeks by the Sea, which blends fact and fiction to imagine Austen’s visit to the seaside in 1801. As an Austen expert, she has also frequently appeared on television, broadcast on radio, and consulted on period dramas. Beyond her Austen scholarship, Paula has written best-selling biographies about Dido Elizabeth Belle, Mary Robinson, Barbara Pym, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh, and Thomas Hardy.
Hilary Davidson is a dress, textile, and fashion historian and curator, and Chair and Associate Professor in the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She has curated exhibitions, lectured widely, and published extensively. Her books include Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion, Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, and A Guide to Regency Dress.
For an edited transcript and show notes, visit https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep36
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