The term Janeite has been both embraced by devotees of the works of Jane Austen and used as a term of opprobrium. According to Austen scholar Claudia Johnson Janeitism is "the self-consciously idolatrous enthusiasm for 'Jane' and every detail relative to her". [1]
Janeitism did not begin until after the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870, when the literary elite felt that they had to separate their appreciation of Austen from that of the masses. [1] The term Janeite was originally coined by the literary scholar George Saintsbury in his 1894 introduction to a new edition of Pride and Prejudice . [2] As Austen scholar Deidre Lynch explains, "he meant to equip himself with a badge of honor he could jubilantly pin to his own lapel". [3] It has been said that the early twentieth century, Janeitism was "principally a male enthusiasm shared among publishers, professors, and literati". [4] Rudyard Kipling even published a short story entitled "The Janeites" about a group of World War I soldiers who were secretly fans of Austen's novels. [5] There were, however, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century female devotees of Austen, especially in the New Woman movement and among women's suffrage activists. [6]
During the 1930s and 1940s, when Austen's works were canonised and accepted as worthy of academic study, the term began to change meaning. It was used to signify those who appreciated Austen in the "wrong" way and the term, according to Lynch, began to be "used almost exclusively about and against other people" (emphasis in original). [7] This is no longer necessarily the case, as Austen appreciators have reclaimed the term in books and on social media.
Modern Janeites are described by their most fervent detractors in the same tones as Trekkies; academically speaking, the Janeite phenomenon can be seen as the very first "subculture" with all the attendant aspects, including pejorative but also positive. Johnson noted Janeites are "derided and marginalized by dominant cultural institutions bent on legitimizing their own objects and protocols of expertise". [8] However, though academics dismiss the Janeites as the literary equivalent to Trekkies, there is a difference in that Austen's works are considered to be high culture unlike Star Trek. [8] It remains a popular interest however, with publication of such recent books as 2013's Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom and Global Jane Austen: Pleasure, Passion, and Possessiveness in the Jane Austen Community. [9]
At the same time, Austen remains a topic of serious academic inquiry at top global universities in a way to which very recent subcultures are only just beginning to aspire. The male Janeites have often been attacked as unmanly. [10] For an example, the British scholar H. W. Garrod delivered "A Depreciation of Jane Austen" before the Royal Society for Literature in May 1928, which Johnson called extremely misogynistic and homophobic, as he attacked Austen as a writer for no other reason than she was a woman, whose male characters were all "soft", and contemptuously stated that any man who liked Austen was effeminate and not a real man at all. [10] Johnson argued that attacks such as Garrod's on the Janeites might help explain why the Janeites were once wrongly understood to be predominately female. [10]
Scholars such as Johnson and Lynch study "the ludic enthusiasm of [the] amateur reading clubs, whose 'performances' include teas, costume balls, games, readings, and dramatic representations, staged with a campy anglophilia in North America, and a brisker antiquarian meticulousness in England, and whose interests range from Austenian dramatizations, to fabrics, to genealogies, and to weekend study trips". [11] Lynch has described committed Janeites as members of a cult, comparing their travels to places Austen lived or places described in her novels or their adaptations as pilgrimages, for example. She argues that such activities provide "a kind of time-travel to the past, because they preserve an all but vanished Englishness or set of 'traditional' values....This may demonstrate the influence of a sentimental account of Austen's novels that presents them as means by which readers might go home again – to a comfortable, soothingly normal world." [12] More recently, scholars have been less dismissive of the cultural importance, rich history, and social power of literary fandoms, including Austen's.
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Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 novel of manners by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, published in 1811. It was published anonymously; By A Lady appears on the title page where the author's name might have been. It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret.
Jane Porter was an English historical novelist, dramatist and literary figure. Her bestselling novels, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810) are seen as among the earliest historical novels in a modern style and among the first to become bestsellers. They were abridged and remained popular among children well into the twentieth century.
May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair, a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. She once dressed up as a demure, rebel Jane Austen for a suffrage fundraising event. Sinclair was also a significant critic in the area of modernist poetry and prose, and she is attributed with first using the term 'stream of consciousness' in a literary context, when reviewing the first volumes of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–1967), in The Egoist, April 1918.
First Impressions is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by George Weiss, Bo Goldman, and Glenn Paxton, and book by Abe Burrows, who also directed the musical. It is based on Helen Jerome's 1935 stage adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.
Elizabeth Bennet is the protagonist in the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She is often referred to as Eliza or Lizzy by her friends and family. Elizabeth is the second child in a family of five daughters. Though the circumstances of the time and environment push her to seek a marriage of convenience for economic security, Elizabeth wishes to marry for love.
Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered. It also became associated with sentimental moral philosophy.
Janet Margaret Todd is a British academic and author. She was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare. Much of her work concerns Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and their circles.
The reception history of Jane Austen follows a path from modest fame to wild popularity. Jane Austen (1775–1817), the author of such works as Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), has become one of the best-known and most widely read novelists in the English language. Her novels are the subject of intense scholarly study and the centre of a diverse fan culture.
Jane Austen lived her entire life as part of a family located socially and economically on the lower fringes of the English gentry. The Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, Jane Austen's parents, lived in Steventon, Hampshire, where Rev. Austen was the rector of the Anglican parish from 1765 until 1801. Jane Austen's immediate family was large and close-knit. She had six brothers—James, George, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Edward—and a beloved older sister, Cassandra. Austen's brother Edward was adopted by Thomas and Elizabeth Knight and eventually inherited their estates at Godmersham, Kent, and Chawton, Hampshire. In 1801, Rev. Austen retired from the ministry and moved his family to Bath, Somerset. He died in 1805 and for the next four years, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother lived first in rented quarters and then in Southampton where they shared a house with Frank Austen's family. During these unsettled years, they spent much time visiting various branches of the family. In 1809, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved permanently into a large "cottage" in Chawton village that was part of Edward's nearby estate. Austen lived at Chawton until she moved to Winchester for medical treatment shortly before her death in 1817.
The author Jane Austen and her works have been represented in popular culture in a variety of forms.
A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives. However, it was the decisions of her sister, Cassandra Austen, to destroy many of Jane's letters after her death that shaped the material available for the biography.
Jane Austen's (1775–1817) distinctive literary style relies on a combination of parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech and a degree of realism. She uses parody and burlesque for comic effect and to critique the portrayal of women in 18th-century sentimental and Gothic novels. Austen extends her critique by highlighting social hypocrisy through irony; she often creates an ironic tone through free indirect speech in which the thoughts and words of the characters mix with the voice of the narrator. The degree to which critics believe Austen's characters have psychological depth informs their views regarding her realism. While some scholars argue that Austen falls into a tradition of realism because of her finely executed portrayal of individual characters and her emphasis on "the everyday", others contend that her characters lack a depth of feeling compared with earlier works, and that this, combined with Austen's polemical tone, places her outside the realist tradition.
Sir John Henry Scourfield, 1st Baronet was a Welsh Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1852 to 1876.
Charles Abraham Chasselat, a French historical painter, was the son of Pierre Chasselat. He was born in Paris in 1782, and became a pupil of his father and of Vincent. He exhibited in 1812 'The Repose of Belisarius.' He also illustrated the works of Voltaire, Racine, Molière, and other authors, including the first French translations of Jane Austen's novels in the 1820s. He was employed in making drawings of state ceremonials, as the 'Funeral of Louis XVIII' and the 'Coronation of Charles X' He died in Paris in 1843. His son Henri Jean Saint-Ange Chasselat (1813-1880), a pupil of Lethière, painted historical and genre subjects.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a character in the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. According to Janet Todd, Lady Catherine can be seen as a foil to the novel's protagonist Elizabeth Bennet.
Sackville Street is a street in central London which today is mainly composed of offices and the rears of retail premises, but once was the home to several important medical figures.
Helen Jerome (1878–1966) was a British-Australian journalist, author and playwright most famous for her adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice for the stage. She is credited with having created the first heartthrob, desire-filled version of Austen's hero, Mr. Darcy.
Devoney Kay Looser is an American literary critic and Jane Austen scholar. She is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where she focuses on women's writing and the history of the novel.
