Just what you never knew you always wanted: a playlist of Jane Austen’s favorite songs.
Regardless of our feelings toward Emma’s Mrs. Elton, we can agree with her sentiment that “without music, life would be a blank”—so it’s a happy occasion that Colorado Public Radio, aided by Austen scholar Joan Ray, has assembled a playlist of songs Jane Austen likely enjoyed.
Austen was a music enthusiast and an avid piano player; she built piano into many of her characters’ lives, and music scholars believe her piano-playing was necessary to her writing practice, as she wrote very little when she lived in Bath without an instrument but published all six of her major works once she had a piano again. But unlike certain other writers, Austen doesn’t cite many specific pieces or composers in her works; so CPR has compiled a playlist of pieces found in Austen’s often-used music books, as well as few songs off of Austen film soundtracks.
[via Colorado Public Radio]
