Just when you thought that Austen-mania might have run its course—when the poster of Colin Firth was starting to look a little curled and faded—along comes a new incarnation for the brand. Time-travelling in and out of Austen was last year’s hit (there were several novels as well the television drama Lost in Austen); but the oddest manifestation is Austen horror, in the form of two forthcoming books, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Jane Bites Back (in which Austen becomes a vampire); there is also a film in development at Elton John’s Rocket Pictures called Pride and Predator, in which the 1987 cult monster guns for the Bennets of Meryton.
If, as promised in Jane Bites Back, the author “sets out to avenge herself on everyone who has exploited her name and books,” she will have her work cut out. Known as much today through film and television adaptations as through the novels themselves, Austen is one of the most used and abused signifiers in our culture, turning up almost randomly across the media. Witness, for example, one PR’s description of the television show Survivor as “Jane Austen with monitor lizards.”
This global recognition is especially surprising given the slow and uncertain beginnings of her fame. For most of her lifetime, Austen was merely an aspiring novelist; her books stacked up on the shelf in manuscript and only began to be published—anonymously—in the last six years of her life. On publication, they found a small audience, but their success faded so quickly after her death in 1817 that all her titles were eventually remaindered or pulped. Her work had reappeared by the mid-19th century, but it was only with the publication in 1870 of her nephew’s Memoir of Jane Austen that she gained anything like mass recognition.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
