Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds.

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Next month marks the bicentenary of a work we might have known under its earlier title First Impressions.

It was sold to a publisher for a mere £110, not even a good book deal in 1813, when Pride and Prejudice appeared and began its journey to the top of the Premier League of English Fiction.

Jane Austen saga of the Bennett sisters contending with the strictures of the marriage market, social convention,

and parents of contradictory temperament was an immediate success, but it hasn't always inspired slavish admiration.

Mark Twain said he'd never got to the end of it, adding,

she makes me detest all her people without reserve.

Some critics have objected to the focus on affairs of the heart and half,

while the Napoleonic Wars rage and Industrial Revolution bruise.

Others have complained about the hallowed status bestowed by gushing admirers on dear Aunt Jane

as a revered Miss Marple of romantic fiction.

But few novels can have had such a productive afterlife.

It's been adapted for the screen dozens of times, including a 1952 TV version

with a very young Prunella scales as Lydia and improbably

Peter Cushing as Darcy. P.D. James set a thriller in the hallowed setting of Elizabeth

and Darcy's Pemberley after their marriage, and a version featuring alien life forms,

Pride and Predator, is apparently gestating. Somehow, though, the work itself has survived these

mutations, and tonight we'll be discussing what makes pride and prejudice so enjoyably durable.

Joining me are two eminent Austenologists, John Mullen, Professor of English at University

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