#literary-legacy

#literary-legacy

On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England the seventh of eight children to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world. Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they've never actually read Pride and Prejudice.

"I was very into film and particularly TV at that point," he recalls, "and this was the first made-for-TV movie that public television had ever done. When I saw her on set with all these people deferring to her and making a movie out of one of her books, the pennies began to drop for me. I was like, 'Oh. My mother's important.'"

Jilly Cooper was a genuinely merry soul, with a gimlet eye and a determination to see the best in absolutely everything; even when her life was difficult, she brightened every room with her spaniel hair. What fun she had and shared with us, and what a wonderful legacy she left. It would be easier to count the novelists of my generation who didn't read her. Not just the world-conquering Riders