The Jane Austen Season films were first aired in the United States on WGBH-TV as part of the PBS Masterpiece series, "The Complete Jane Austen". The Jane Austen Season The Jane Austen Season is a British television series of dramas based on novels by Jane Austen. The season began on ITV at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday 18 March 2007, with "Mansfield Park". The following week, "Northanger Abbey" was aired. The season ended with the airing of "Persuasion" on Sunday 1 April 2007. A repeat of the 1996 feature-length film "Emma" was broadcast on Friday 6 April 2007. The combined ITV and BBC series was
Reception history of Jane Austen "one of the most distinguished modern British novelists". Around the start of the 20th century, Austen novels began to be studied at universities and appear in histories of the English novel. The image of her that dominated the popular imagination was still that first presented in the "Memoir" and made famous by Howells in his series of essays in "Harper's Magazine", that of "dear aunt Jane". Author and critic Leslie Stephen described a mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry"—it was only after the publication of the "Memoir" that readers developed a personal connection with