Jane Austen on Old-Time Radio: Creating Imaginative Worlds

Abstract

Jane Austen’s novels have been perennially popular subjects for radio adaptation on both sides of the Atlantic. Rolf Breuer’s extensive bibliography on continuations, completions, and adaptations lists 26 American productions on all the major networks between 1939 and 1960; and 33 BBC adaptations on the old Third Programme, Home Service, and General Overseas Service, as well as their contemporary equivalents—BBC Radios 3 and 4 and the World Service (Breuer). Fortunately for radio enthusiasts, several productions from the archives are accessible online: BBC’s digital radio station Radio 4 Extra (http://www.bbc.co.uk/Radio4Extra) regularly airs reruns of 1980s’ versions of all the novels (originally broadcast in the Classic Serial slot on Radio 4), while several old-time radio (OTR) sites have American versions of Pride and Prejudice from the late 1940s available for download. Such programs were not designed for posterity; partly, this was due to the fact that until the use of magnetic tape became widespread in the post-1945 era, all dramas were broadcast live. Moreover, corporations such as NBC and CBS adopted recording policies that made it difficult, if not impossible to prerecord; they “denounced recordings as an inferior form of culture” (Morton 72). Even when dramas were recorded, they were seldom kept for very long; until the 1970s, the BBC reused most of their tapes (as they were expensive) in the belief that there was little residual value in archiving them.