Jane Austen Made Me Do It

T
here are few authors whose name alone personifies wit, style, and social reproof as brilliantly as that of English novelist Jane Austen. Her six major works, published between 1811 and 1817, have been embraced as masterpieces of world literature by scholars and pleasure readers alike, evoking images of the landed gentry engaged in drawing-room comedies of manners and social machinations during the Regency era. Renowned for her perceptive characterizations, beautiful language, and engaging plots, Austen was not only the witty muse of the nineteenth-century novel, she continues to inspire writers today, fostering the flourishing Austenesque-sequel genre. For those who greatly admire Austen and the unique world she created, there are now hundreds of books continuing her stories, characters, and outlook on life and love, written by creative and talented authors. This short-story anthology contains twenty-two contributions exclusively
commissioned from popular and bestselling authors who have excelled in fiction inspired by Austen or other genres and who greatly admire her talent. Each will readily admit, “Jane Austen made me do it!”

Editing this anthology has been a lifetime in the making, and I, too, freely admit that “Jane Austen made me do it!” In 1980, I was a young college student studying landscape design at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, secretly taking elective units in British history and literature to fuel my interest for all things English. I was a closet Anglophile in a sea of agriculture and engineering students when the PBS television series
Masterpiece Theatre
aired Fay Weldon's adaptation of
Pride and Prejudice
. It was a seminal moment. A fan had been born. I was now a Janeite, though at the time I did not know the term existed, let alone that there were other acolytes out there as passionate as I was. Inspired by the miniseries, I read all of Austen's novels and worshiped in silence.

I was familiar with Jane Austen and the story of
Pride and Prejudice
in a peripheral way through an early introduction by my mother to the 1940 MGM movie starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. However, that creative Hollywoodization of one of literature's glistening jewels did not ignite an iota of interest beyond a quick perusal of an edition of
The Complete Novels of
Jane Austen
in the family library. It did, however, plant a seed. By the time I saw actors Elizabeth Garvie's and David Rintoul's captivating portrayals of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in the 1980 adaptation, I was primed for a revelation. Five hours of visual splendor—including plenty of footage of English drawing rooms filled with period frocks and breeches—combined with Austen's beautiful nineteenth-century language and an enchanting love story, hooked me like an intoxicating drug. In 2007, after years of reading, study, and online discussion, I created
Austenprose.com
, a blog dedicated to the brilliance of Jane Austen's writing and the many books and movies that she has inspired. To the unindoctrinated, devoting an entire website to one author may seem a bit excessive. For me it was as logical as dancing being “a certain step toward falling in love,” leading me to connections and a career that I never anticipated.

Thirty years after I first discovered Austen, “my Jane” is everywhere. In the last two hundred years, there have been many novels that qualify as masterpieces of world literature, but none have inspired the creative output that Austen's have. From books to movies to websites—not even the eminent Charles Dickens or the venerable William Shakespeare can touch our Incomparable Jane. Why do her stories so entrance and delight us? What is it about her haughty Mr. Darcy that makes him an iconic romantic hero? How does she cleverly play with our emotions, making us laugh out loud while reading
Emma
for the tenth time? And why has she inspired a whole new book genre?

Perhaps the most curious question is: How did an English author
of only six major novels written anonymously “by a lady” close to two centuries ago become an international sensation, media darling, and pop culture icon?

Austen's rise to fame has been steady since her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh's biography,
A Memoir of Jane Austen
, introduced “dear Aunt Jane” to broader readership in 1869, but recently, two elements have been her strongest catalyst: the Internet and a wet shirt. In 1995 a new five-hour mini-series of
Pride and Prejudice
adapted by British screenwriter Andrew Davies would expose Austen to a wider audience with his new, more energized interpretation, including a provocative plunge into the Pemberley pond by Austen's hero Mr. Darcy, who emerged not only dripping wet, but a romantic icon of Nonpareil. Moreover, add to that the notion that both Regency-era and twentieth-century ladies thought it absolutely necessary that they “should meet to talk over a ball,” and Jane Austen on the Internet was born at
Pemberley.com
. With the further production of movie adaptations of each of her novels in the mid 1990s and into the 2000s, Austen's celebrity had reached far beyond its author's ironic boast of “writing only for fame” to megastar status.

Prior to the landmark airing of
Pride and Prejudice
in 1995, only a few dozen Austen-inspired sequels had been published, and even fewer still remained in print. Jane Austen's own nieces were the first to take up the banner. In the 1830s, Anna Lefroy, daughter of her eldest brother, James, was the first to attempt completing
Sanditon
, Austen's last unfinished work, written in 1817 while she was in failing health. Ironically, Lefroy did not complete Austen's story either. I can't say I blame her. Aunt Jane was a hard act to follow, and the pressure must have been overwhelming. Two decades later the novel
The Younger Sister
by Catherine-Anne Hubback, daughter of Austen's brother Frank, was published in 1850. Freely incorporating characters and plot from Austen's unfinished and unpublished fragment
The Watsons
, it can now be classified as a completion of Austen's story, though at the time of publication, the only credit given to her Aunt Jane was Hubback's dedication to her in the book. Fifty years later the first Austen sequel to be published would be Sybil G. Brinton's 1913
Old Friends and New Fancies
, a clever amalgamation of characters from each of Austen's novels worked into Brinton's own unique plot. One could say that it was the first Austen “mash-up,” published close to a century before
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
would make the bestseller lists in 2009. Each of these novels, though vastly different in style and concept, share their success through their unique creativity and connection to Austen fans who crave more of the world and characters that Jane Austen created.