Where To Buy Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

When the Archbishop of Dublin made this statement in a long article he wrote in 1821, just four years after the death of Jane Austen (1775 - 1816), he was recognizing the genius of a writer whose identity was unknown during her lifetime. Now, two hundred years later, with "Jane-mania" reaching epic proportions, Claire Harman writes a scholarly and readable analysis of the events over the past two centuries which have led to Jane Austen's increasing popularity, ultimately explaining "How Jane Austen Conquered the World."

Writing for the public was still a man's activity in the early 1800s, and Jane Austen spent most of her life writing privately, for family and friends. For twenty years, she wrote and, more importantly, rewrote her six famous novels, before Sense and Sensibility was finally published anonymously in 1811, when Jane was thirty-five. Pride and Prejudice followed in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815. Two more novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously, in 1817. Her books did not sell a large number of copies, though she was praised by the literati, including dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Sir Walter Scott, who, in 1815, wrote a four thousand-word praise of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma.

After her death and public acknowledgement of her authorship, her work remained in print, and by 1840, Jane Austen was being compared to Shakespeare by Thomas Babington Macaulay. As the nineteenth century continued, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and others all praised her work. (Charlotte Bronte was a well-publicized dissenter.) In 1869, Jane Austen's nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published a memoir about Jane which went into extra printings, and by the 1890s, the "Janeites" were almost a cult. In the 20th century, Henry James was regarded as Austen's "literary son and heir." The Bloomsbury group loved Austen, and Virginia Woolf became a "penetrating and sympathetic critic" of her work.

The biggest boost to Jane Austen's popularity came with the movies of the 1940s. Her books, regarded as romantic, have continued to gain popularity, and author Claire Harman believes that the current popularity of "chick lit" owes much to the fact that these books are often based on Jane Austen's plot outlines, with their "erotic potential." All of Austen's books have now spawned their own TV mini-series, gaining instant fans for Austen across the globe. Jane's fans will love this thorough, scholarly study, filled with anecdotes and thoughtful, new insights into Jane Austen's legacy. Harman's analysis of the trends which have made Jane Austen popular for almost two hundred years is sensitive to changing tastes while also acknowledging the universal characteristics which make Jane Austen so beloved by her fans today. Mary Whipple
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