Her just released Jane Austen the Secret Radical has been animating a new interesting debate around our beloved Regency lady. Helena Kelly has been under the spotlight in the latest days as the author of this interesting non-fiction book which uncovers Jane Austen as a radical, spirited and politically engaged woman writer. So those who have in their minds the tranquil, smiling woman on the new £10 pound banknote apparently got everything wrong about her.
After receiving my review copy of this brilliant work and after reading its original analysis, I ended up with a few questions to ask Helena Kelly so I wrote them down and was graciously granted the answers.
I must thank Helena for her kindness and generosity in the fuss that must have been the promotion of her book in the first days after the release. There have been reviews and interviews even in the major press, but she could find some spare time and answered my questions! Here I am now, happy and proud, to share my little interview with you.
Maria Grazia
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Hello Helena and welcome to our online Jane Austen book
club! My first question is … I’ve always thought Jane Austen was rather
revolutionary, but now you’ve taken a step ahead of me: a radical?
Hello, and thank you
for inviting me! The title Jane Austen the Secret Radical isn’t actually mine, but it is a good choice
for the book. I don’t know that Austen wanted to overturn things, but she did
want to dig down and examine them, to show people how they actually worked, and
that’s what radicalism is about, isn’t it, getting down to the ‘radix’, the
root of things.
