The enduring popularity of Jane Austen

A coloured engraving based on the Cassandra portrait. (c. 1873) Image taken from 'The Jane Austen Miscellany' by Lauren Nixon.

It has been 200 years since Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, was first published and both the book and its characters remain extremely popular. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy regularly top readers’ lists of the most popular characters in literature but who exactly is Jane Austen and why is she so popular?

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 to the Reverend George and Mrs Cassandra Austen during a particularly cold winter and since her first publication (Sense & Sensibility) in 1811 she has gone from an anonymous lady writer to the godmother of modern ‘chick lit’. However, her letters and novels reveal a highly intelligent and witty woman who was gently satirical in her work and someone for whom family were of the utmost importance. She was the youngest girl in a large family with 6 brothers and 1 sister and it is clear that she enjoyed society, often reading excerpts from her novels to friends and family. Jane never married (despite receiving a proposal in December 1802) and died of illness in Winchester  on 18 July 1817, aged 41.

For many, Jane Austen’s works are seen as the ultimate choice in romantic escapism and Pride & Prejudice’s enduring popularity pays testament to Jane’s literary skill. In 1870, Antony Trollope wrote that

"[Austen] places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; – and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her."

Although Jane only wrote of the (seemingly) genteel upper-middle classes, her sharp intelligence produced complex characters that explored and challenged societal norms and that were adored and loathed in equal part.

"First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest  artist that has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There  are heights and depths in human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate  existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she had not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb, and vital."-  G.H. Lewes, in The Lady Novelists, 1852

"Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."- Mark Twain