Happy Birthday, Jane!

THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY of North America first met in 1979 at the Gramercy Park Hotel, just steps from my CUNY office. No plaque marks this momentous occasion, but JASNA lives on, now boasting more than 5,000 members and over 80 regional societies. That first meeting was covered in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town. One guest discussed the term “Janeites,” which she felt “doesn’t sound exactly right […] I’m not sure Jane would have liked it.” I’m less sure that Austen wouldn’t have liked it. After all, contra the family hagiography that cropped up shortly after her early death, Austen was at least tickled by the prospect of fame, and she thrilled at the small profit she gained from her writing. The idea that, as her brother wrote, Austen “turned away from any allusion to the character of the authoress” is just one of the myths that contemporary scholarship is quick to debunk.