THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY of North America first met in 1979 at the Gramercy Park Hotel, just steps from my CUNY office. No plaque marks this momentous occasion, but JASNA lives on, now boasting more than 5,000 members and over 80 regional societies. That first meeting was covered in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town. One guest discussed the term “Janeites,” which she felt “doesn’t sound exactly right […] I’m not sure Jane would have liked it.” I’m less sure that Austen wouldn’t have liked it. After all, contra the family hagiography that cropped up shortly after her early death, Austen was at least tickled by the prospect of fame, and she thrilled at the small profit she gained from her writing. The idea that, as her brother wrote, Austen “turned away from any allusion to the character of the authoress” is just one of the myths that contemporary scholarship is quick to debunk.
This week marks the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, and the year has met with a flurry of gifts for veteran and aspiring Janeites alike—academic and popular studies, biographies, adaptations, and exhibitions. Though the anniversary offers a convenient hook for publication, the wave of work on Austen shows no sign of slowing down. At a time when reading for pleasure has declined, one thing is certain: Jane Austen fans read. A recent JASNA signing event featured over two dozen authors, many of them flogging titles published by university presses, all met with lines of patient readers flocking to their Regency comic con. It would seem Austen offers endless opportunity for examination and reexamination; still, it might be fair to ask what more one can say about our dear Jane. The titles under review here answer this question variously, but it’s clear to me that the best examples bridge or outright defy the traditional divide between Austen scholarship and Austen fandom.