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Authors Adelle Waldman, Brandon Taylor and Jennifer Egan at the Strand Bookstore\u2019s Tea Party in New York City to celebrate Jane Austen\u2019s 250th birthday.<\/p>\n
(Vintage Books)<\/p>\n
Egan, Waldman and Taylor, along with Sandra Cisneros, Nicola Yoon and Lauren Groff, have each been commissioned by publisher Vintage to write new introductions to the six titles that have been refreshed and reissued. The sold-out gathering at the Strand was one of six tea parties being thrown throughout the country by the publisher to commemorate Austen\u2019s semiquincentennial. Another well-attended get-together was held earlier this month at Culver City\u2019s the Ripped Bodice bookstore, where sugar cookies specially prepared by local baker Nicolette Buenrostro, of Dottie\u2019s House of Sweets, depicted various Austen book covers. And the tea flowed.<\/p>\n
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Portrait of Jane Austen. Engraving, 1870.<\/p>\n
(Getty Images \/ Universal Images)<\/p>\n
The Strand assemblage, a cozy affair held amid shelves of leather-bound first editions in a room that frequently hosts weddings, drew people of all ages, mostly of the female variety. Among the youngest in the crowd was a fifth-grader named Mathilda who recently read \u201cEmma\u201d and has since become its author\u2019s ardent fan. On TikTok, #JaneAusten has amassed over 200 million views, many of them Gen Z and younger, but when asked if that was where Mathilda discovered Austen, she appeared mildly offended by the association and proffered a withering \u201cno.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not on social media,\u201d she politely announced. After reading Louisa May Alcott\u2019s \u201cLittle Women,\u201d she explained, she yearned for more \u201cold-fashioned\u201d stories centering girls and women. There is a dearth of such tales in contemporary literature, in her opinion, whose characters tend to favor boys and men. On a search for another book by a 19th century woman author, a copy of \u201cEmma\u201d on display at a local bookstore caught her eye, and she picked it up. A new Janeite was born.<\/p>\n
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(S&S\/Marysue Rucci Books)<\/p>\n
Jane Austen \u2014 whom many consider the creator of the modern novel \u2014 was born Dec. 16, 1775 in Steventon, England, the seventh of eight children. Her father was the rector of two parishes and ran a small boys\u2019 school to supplement the family\u2019s meager income. Austen\u2019s formal education ended at age 11, but the family culture was \u201cdistinctly literary,\u201d according to Rebecca Romney<\/a>, author of \u201cJane Austen\u2019s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector\u2019s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend.\u201d<\/a> Romney writes that the Austens \u201cwere a genteel family \u2014 upper-class but not titled.\u201d The family often read and reread books aloud together, among them Frances Burney\u2019s \u201cEvelina,\u201d whose work was to have an enormous influence on Austen\u2019s own writing, as would such unsung literary predecessors as Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth and others whose work has largely disappeared from modern shelves and was historically dismissed by critics.<\/p>\n Austen couldn\u2019t afford to buy many books herself, but she had access to local \u201ccirculating libraries\u201d and belonged to a local book club whose members split the cost of a book and shared it among themselves. The Austen family also enjoyed theater, and staged and even wrote many plays together at home. In fact, according to Romney, most of the family wrote, whether poetry, sermons, plays, or fiction.<\/p>\n Austen began writing as a child, and her \u201cjuvenilia,\u201d reports Romney, \u201cshow a delight in parody,\u201d a characteristic that would inform her later work. During her lifetime \u2014 Austen died at age 41 \u2014 she published four of her novels, all anonymously, as social conventions of the time discouraged women of a certain class from earning money through trade or in any way seeking notoriety. She had great confidence in her own literary voice, though. Romney recounts that, for example, when someone recommended she write a historical novel, she responded, \u201cNo, I must keep to my own style and go in my own way.\u201d After her death, her brother Henry saw to it that her two remaining novels, \u201cNorthanger Abbey\u201d and \u201cPersuasion,\u201d were published under her name, and an accompanying biographical note explicitly named her as author of all six works of fiction that had previously been credited: \u201cBy a Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n Author Rebecca Romney<\/p>\n (Donnamaria R. Jones)<\/p>\n More than 200 years later, not only do Austen\u2019s novels still resonate, they are an industry unto themselves, inspiring hundreds of adaptations across genres, including the 2025 PBS series \u201cMiss Austen,\u201d<\/a> which centers on Jane\u2019s sister and confidante, Cassandra, and a new film version of \u201cSense and Sensibility,\u201d starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne, set for release in September 2026. There have even been Austen-inspired online role-playing games such as the now-defunct \u201cEver, Jane,\u201d as well as a 2D platformer game in which Austen uses a quill to fight off villains based on characters from her various novels. And for horror-loving Austen fans, there\u2019s always \u201cPride and Prejudice and Zombies,\u201d<\/a> a 2009 mash-up novel by Seth Grahame-Smith featuring a fictional zombie plague set in the Regency era.<\/p>\n What accounts for Jane Austen\u2019s continuing relevance? Some attribute it to Austen\u2019s role in ushering in the rom-com, and perfecting the \u201cmarriage plot\u201d in her courtship novels. She is a brilliant wordsmith, who had a transformative effect in literature by shifting the focus inward using indirect discourse to combine a character\u2019s inner thoughts with the narrator\u2019s voice. The psychological complexity she achieved paved the way for such future writers as Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and James Joyce.<\/p>\n Despite being of the 18th century, Austen\u2019s heroines are singular for how they grapple with who they are, and with a growing awareness of how they feel, as opposed to what others are telling them to feel \u2014 which resonates greatly with contemporary readers. Romney explains it this way: \u201cAusten novels encourage reading and rereading, as well as contemplation. She makes ordinary women feel extraordinary, that we are the main characters of our own story. She formalizes that and gives us a reason to believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n As 2025 closes out, there is at least one prediction that can be safely made: Our romance with Jane Austen shows no signs of waning.<\/p>\n (Answer: Frederick Tilney) <\/p>\n Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah\u2019s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.<\/p>\n ![\"Author](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1767106870_624_.jpeg\")
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