It is a truth universally acknowledged that, while 2025 has given us more than our share of horrors, for Janeites (Jane Austen devotees) it has provided a year-long opportunity to celebrate the great author's 250th birthday.
At one such event on a chilly night in New York City, approximately 150 self-proclaimed Austen nerds gathered in the rare book room of the iconic Strand bookstore to sip Pemberley tea and nibble on scones smeared with strawberry jam while swapping tidbits about their literary idol. Some of the attendees, including Strand staff, dressed up in Regency-era attire: women in empire-waist dresses, with event director Walker Iverson dreamily in a Mr. Darcy-inspired puffy shirt he'd found on Amazon being sold as part of a pirate costume. Then novelists Jennifer Egan, Adelle Waldman and Brandon Taylor took the stage to collectively reflect on Austen's enduring legacy and decide which of her novels: “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Mansfield Park”, “Emma”, “Northanger Abbey” or “Persuasion”“- It should be everyone's favorite. Surprisingly, none of the three claimed Austen's best-known novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” while dark horse candidate “Mansfield Park” — Austen's third novel, much less brilliant and even gloomy, seemed to triumph. Following their conversation, audience members engaged in a lively game of trivia about Jane Austen, during which it was clear that everyone in the room had done their homework. Example question: In “Northanger Abbey,” who does Isabella Thorpe have an affair with? A) Federico Tilney; B) Charles Bingley; or C) Silas Marner? (Read until the end for the answer.)
Authors Adelle Waldman, Brandon Taylor and Jennifer Egan at the Strand Bookstore Tea Party in New York City to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
(old books)
Egan, Waldman and Taylor, along with Sandra Cisneros, Nicola Yoon and Lauren Groff, were commissioned by publisher Vintage to write new introductions to the six titles that have been updated and reissued. The sold-out gathering at the Strand was one of six tea parties the publisher hosted around the country to mark Austen's semi-quincentenary. Another well-attended gathering was held earlier this month at Culver City's Ripped Bodice bookstore, where sugar cookies specially made by local baker Nicolette Buenrostro of Dottie's House of Sweets depicted several Austen book covers. And the tea flowed.
Portrait of Jane Austen. Engraving, 1870.
(Getty Images/Universal Images)
The Strand setup, a cozy event held among shelves of leather-bound first editions in a room that frequently hosts weddings, attracted people of all ages, mostly women. Among the youngest in the crowd was a fifth-grader named Mathilda who recently read “Emma” and has since become an avid fan of its author. On TikTok, #JaneAusten has racked up more than 200 million views, many of them from Gen Z and younger, but when asked if that's where Mathilda discovered Austen, she seemed a little offended by the association and offered a withering “no.” “I'm not on social media,” he announced politely. After reading “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, she explained, she longed for more “old-fashioned” stories centered on girls and women. In his opinion, there is a shortage of stories of this type in contemporary literature, whose characters tend to favor boys and men. While searching for another book by a 19th-century author, a copy of “Emma” on display at a local bookstore caught her eye and she picked it up. A new Janeite was born.
(S&S Books/Marysue Rucci)
Jane Austen, whom many consider the creator of the modern novel, was born on December 16, 1775 in Steventon, England, the seventh of eight children. His father was rector of two parishes and ran a school for young children to supplement the family's meager income. Austen's formal education ended at age 11, but the family culture was “distinctly literary,” according to Rebecca Romney, author of “Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend.” Romney writes that the Austens “were a genteel, upper-class but untitled family.” The family often read and re-read books aloud, among them “Evelina” by Frances Burney, whose work was to have an enormous influence on Austen's own writing, as well as anonymous literary predecessors such as Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth and others whose work has largely disappeared from modern shelves and was historically dismissed by critics.
Austen could not afford to buy many books, but she had access to local “circulating libraries” 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 performed and even wrote many plays together at home. In fact, according to Romney, most of the family wrote, whether poetry, sermons, plays, or fiction.
Austen began writing as a child and her “youthfulness,” Romney reports, “shows a delight in parody,” a characteristic that would inform her later work. During her lifetime (Austen died at age 41) she published four of her novels, all anonymously., since the social conventions of the time discouraged women of a certain class from making money through trade or in any way seeking notoriety. However, he had great confidence in his own literary voice. Romney says that, for example, when someone recommended she write a historical novel, she responded: “No, I have to keep my own style and follow my own path.” After her death, her brother Henry saw to it that her two remaining novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published under her name, and an accompanying biographical note explicitly named her the author of the six works of fiction that had previously been credited: “By a Lady.”
Author Rebecca Romney
(Donnamaria R. Jones)
More than 200 years later, Austen's novels not only continue to resonate, but are an industry unto themselves, inspiring hundreds of adaptations across genres, including the 2025 PBS series “Miss Austen,” which centers on Jane's sister and confidant Cassandra, and a new film version of “Sense and Sensibility,” starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne, which premieres It is scheduled for September. 2026. There have even been Austen-inspired online role-playing games, such as the now-defunct “Ever, Jane,” as well as a 2D platformer in which Austen uses a pen to fight villains based on characters from her various novels. And for horror-loving Austen fans, there's always “Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies,” a 2009 mashup novel by Seth Grahame-Smith featuring a fictional zombie plague set in the Regency era.
What accounts for Jane Austen's continued relevance? Some attribute this to Austen's role in initiating the romantic comedy and perfecting the “marriage plot” in her courtship novels. She is a brilliant wordsmith, who had a transformative effect on literature by shifting the focus inward by using reported speech to combine a character's inner thoughts with the narrator's voice. The psychological complexity he achieved paved the way for future writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and James Joyce.
Despite being from the 18th century, Austen's heroines are characterized by the way they struggle with who they are and with a growing awareness of how they feel, as opposed to what others tell them to feel, which resonates greatly with contemporary readers. Romney explains it this way: “Austen's novels encourage reading and rereading, as well as contemplation. She makes ordinary women feel extraordinary, that we are the main characters in our own story. She formalizes that and gives us a reason to believe it.”
As the year 2025 approaches, there is at least one prediction that can be made with confidence: our love affair with Jane Austen shows no signs of abating.
(Answer: Federico Tilney)
Haber is a writer, editor and editorial strategist. She was director of Oprah's Book Club and editor of books by Oh, Oprah Magazine.
