It seems Popular Culture is undergoing a sort of Jane Austen revival at the moment- the Beeb seem to be falling over themselves to remake all her books on the telly/DVD, there are numerous Jane Austen-related books out there, lots of references to Mr. Darcy and Jane Austen books in general culture, and, of course, the recently released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Why?
What’s so great about Jane Austen? Why aren’t we having a Mark Twain revival? Or an H. Rider Haggard revival? What is it about people in bonnets sitting around in gazebos taking tea with people with top hats and lamb-chop sideburns that’s so appealing to modern women?
I’m at a loss to understand it. I like English literature and I understand the period in history, but I just don’t see what’s so attractive about it.
Any Austen fans got some insight they’d like to share?
Not really. I mean, she’s been around for 200 years and Well-Read people were aware of her work, but it’s only been in the last probably 5 years or so where everything she’s ever written is being turned in a BBC TV Mini-series, a spin-off book from Mr. Darcy’s point of view, and then re-filmed by the BBC with different actors, before someone in the US writes a book about people who read Jane Austen, which then gets turned into a Hollywood movie, before someone else says “You know what this needs? Zombies!”
It’s only a matter of time before we get Sense & Sensibility and Ninjas and Pirates at this rate.
So why now for the Jane Austen pop-culture obsession, and not, say at any point in the last 100 years or so?
Just because it doesn’t say “Sense & Sensibility” on the tin, doesn’t mean it’s not Sense & Sensibility in drag.
Example : Sons of Anarchy is an excellllent TV drama about an outlaw biker gang, the power struggles within, its conflicts with other gangs and the Law etc… However, look closely, and you’ll notice it’s really Hamlet On Bikes. Same goes for Jane Austen.
Austen has been consistently popular for the past century, but it sems to me that her works have been going through a bit of a boom lately. I’d date it to 1995, with the broadcast of the *Pride and Prejudice *TV series and the release of the films *Sense and Sensibility *and Clueless, followed by *Emma *in 1996.
Ms Austen’s IMDB page goes back to 1938. She’s been boffo box office for some time now.
Wikipediastates her works always sold well, but a “author and critic Leslie Stephen described the popular mania that started to develop for Austen in the 1880s as ‘Austenolatry’”. (Is that the year it began–or is that the year he noticed it?) Academics began taking her seriously in the early 20th century.
Janeites met quietly, but times change. Here’s The Republic of Pemberley–probably the biggest fan site.
I would rate her as the greatest novelist of all time. The stories are pretty mundane but deliberately so - she chose a very small canvas on which to work. But her writing is second to none. The precision and her descriptive ability leave even Dickens in the shade.
lissener, it’s also my strong perception that she’s enjoyed a tremendous upswing in popularity, especially in translating her stuff into the popular culture, in the last 15 years or so. The previous poster probably shortened the length of time this has been going on - it’s definitely more than five years - but there’s an unmistakable increase in Austen popularity since, I’d guess, the early 80’s, and most definitely exploding with the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. As has already been pointed out, this sort of thing tends to come and go - her work has suddenly burst into the popular forefront before, and it probably will again.
We’ve had a LOT more popular movies being made based on her work, Austen-“inspired” sequels to her work, books about her, funny pop culture shout-outs and parodies, movies about her personally, and so on, much more so that was the case in, say, the 1960s and 1970s. We now have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for God’s sake, not to evene mention Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating. There are countless articles available through a few easily done Google searches noting the same trend.
If you disagree (inexplicably, to me) with the premise, just say so and be done with it, or provide evidence. I’d be interested in knowing why there’s been an upswing in an already-popular author’s work, so it’d be nice if we could stay on topic.
It’s not a sudden popularity, but we might be in the middle of a Jane Austen boom. To be honest, I would think that the height of the boom was ten to fifteen years ago. Read about her popularity in the Wikipedia entry:
She was no more than moderately popular during her lifetime. There was an initial wave of popularity in the mid-1800’s. That first burst of popularity went away for a while and then there was a second wave of popularity in the mid-1900’s in both Jane Austen criticism and movie adaptations. I’m not sure if we’re still in that boom or we’re in a new one. In any case, Jane Austen has always been coming and going in popularity. I think that trying to explain why some particular author is popular at a given time is hopeless.
I second this. Austen-mania really started (and peaked) in the mid-90s and after cooling slightly in the early 2000s, it’s heated up again with P&P and Zombies, BBC adaptations, Jane Austen Book Club, Lost in Austen and a bunch of other stuff.
Sorry, I just realised I left out a “1” in my earlier post- should have been “15 years”, not “5 years”. Gah.
It’s interesting to note Austen-sation (heh) goes in cycles, but I think this time around it’s been fairly consistent since the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth in it. There was a 1997 Red Dwarf episode in which the main characters are taking tea in a Pride & Prejudice simulation when Kryten shows up with a Challenger Tank to blow the Gazebo up, an episode of Futurama which spoofs the whole thing (with a Giant Floating Brain in a powdered wig entering a drawing-room), and there seems to have been an average of around one Pride & Prejudice-related film, TV mini-series, or theatrical production per annum since then, including things like Bridge & Prejudice (Bollywood does Jane Austen), Lost in Austen, and various re-filmings and interpretations of the original novel.
And that’s not counting the rest of her work that’s been filmed for TV or the big screen, either, or the various “Austenverse” books people have written (There’s a long list on Wiki if anyone cares to go and look for it.)
I know it’s a bit pointless asking why a given popular author is popular (I mean, look at Stephenie Meyer’s work), but Jane Austen was writing nearly 200 years ago. What is it about her work that resonates with so many people (mainly young women) in the 21st century?
Part of me is disappointed that it is not about playing cards (I have to wait for the Icelandic version) and part of me needs to request it on Namaste America.
As for why her themes resonate with 21st-century women, on the one hand I can claim my status as a Straight Guy and claim I don’t get it, either, or I can say they may not be ripping yarns, but she draws you into the story and you find yourself rifling through your copy of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England trying to work out the context so you can keep up. Good writing, good plotting, sexy costumes–what’s not to like?
