It is a truth universally acknowledged that while 2025 has given us more than our fair share of horror, for Janeites – fans of Jane Austen – it has provided an opportunity to celebrate the great writer's 250th birthday throughout the year.
At one such event, on a freezing night in New York, about 150 self-proclaimed Austen nerds gathered in the iconic museum's Rare Book Room. Strand Bookshop sipping Pemberley tea and nibbling on strawberry jam scones while exchanging tidbits about their literary idol. Some of those present, including Staff on the shoredepicted in Regency regalia – women in high-waisted dresses, while events director Walker Iverson dreams in a puffy Mr. Darcy-style shirt he found on Amazon and is being sold as part of a pirate costume. Writers Jennifer Egan, Adele Waldman And Brandon Taylor then took the stage to collectively ponder Austen's enduring legacy and decide which of her novels… “Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey or Persuasion.“— must be everyone's favorite. Surprisingly, none of the three laid claim to Austen's most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, while the dark horse Mansfield Park — Austen's much less brilliant and even darker third novel seems to have won the day. After the talk, the audience took part in a lively game of Jane Austen trivia, during which it was revealed that everyone in the room had done their homework. Example question: In Northanger Abbey, who is Isabella Thorpe having an affair with? A) Frederick Tilney; B) Charles Bingley; or C) Silas Marner? (Read until the end to find out the answer.)
Authors Adele Waldman, Brandon Taylor and Jennifer Egan attend a tea party at the Strand Bookstore in New York City to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
(Vintage books)
Vintage Publishing commissioned Egan, Waldman and Taylor, as well as Sandra Cisneros, Nicola Yoon and Lauren Groff, to write new introductions for the six titles that have been updated and re-released. The sold-out meeting in the Strand was one of six tea parties organized by the publisher across the country to mark Austen's semi-quincentenary. Another well-attended gathering took place earlier this month at the Ripped Bodice bookstore in Culver City, where sugar cookies specially made by local baker Nicolette Buenrostro of Dottie's House of Sweets featured various Austen book covers. And the tea started flowing.
Portrait of Jane Austen. Engraving, 1870.
(Getty Images/Universal Images)
The Strand Assembly, a cozy space among shelves of leather-bound first editions in a room often used for weddings, attracted people of all ages, mostly female. Among the youngest in the crowd was a fifth-grader named Matilda, who had recently read Emma and had since become an ardent fan of its author. On TikTok, #JaneAusten has amassed over 200 million views, many of them from Gen Z and younger, but when asked if that's where Matilda discovered Austen, she seemed slightly offended by the association and responded with a sharp “no.” “I’m not on social media,” she announced politely. After reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, she explained, she wanted more “old-fashioned” stories that focused on girls and women. In her opinion, modern literature lacks such fairy tales, the heroes of which tend to give preference to boys and men. While looking for another book by the 19th-century writer, a copy of Emma on display at a local bookstore caught her eye and she picked it up. A new Janeite is born.
(S&S/Books by Marysue Rucci)
Jane Austen, considered by many to be the creator of the modern novel, was born on December 16, 1775 in Steventon, England, the seventh of eight children. Her father was rector of two parishes and ran a small school for boys to supplement the family's meager income. Austen's formal education ended at age 11, but according to Austen, the family culture was “distinctly literary.” Rebecca Romneyauthor “Jane Austen's Bookshelf: Rare Book Collectors' Search to Find the Women Writers Who Made the Legend.” Romney writes that the Austins “were a noble family—upper class, but not titled.” The family often read and reread books together, including Frances Burney's Evelina, whose works had a profound influence on Austen's own work, as well as such overlooked literary predecessors as Anne Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth, and others whose works had all but disappeared from modern shelves and were historically dismissed by critics.
Austen could not afford to buy many books herself, but she had access to local “circulating libraries” and belonged to a local book club, whose members shared the cost of a book and divided it among themselves. The Austen family also loved the theater and staged and even wrote many plays together at home. In fact, according to Romney, most of the family wrote poetry, sermons, plays or fiction.
Austen began writing as a child, and her “juveniles,” Romney reports, “show a fascination with parody,” a characteristic that would define her later work. During her lifetime—Austen died at 41—she published four of her novels, all anonymously., since the social conventions of the time did not allow women of a certain class to earn money by trade or to seek fame in any way. However, she had great confidence in her literary voice. Romney recalls that, for example, when someone advised her to write a historical novel, she replied: “No, I have to stick to my style and go my own way.” After her death, her brother Henry ensured that her two remaining novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published under her name, and the accompanying biographical note explicitly credited her as the author of all six works of fiction previously mentioned: The Woman.
Written by Rebecca Romney
(Donnamaria R. Jones)
More than 200 years later, Austen's novels not only continue to resonate, but they represent an entire industry, inspiring hundreds of adaptations in a variety of genres, including 2025 PBS series “Miss Austin” The story centers on Jane's sister and confidante Cassandra, and a new film version of Sense and Sensibility starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne is scheduled for release in September 2026. There were even 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. fight villains based on characters from her various novels. And for horror fans, there's always Austin. “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” a 2009 collection of novels by Seth Grahame-Smith featuring a fictional zombie plague set during the Regency era.
What explains Jane Austen's enduring relevance? Some attribute this to Austen's role in creating romantic comedy and perfecting the “marriage plot” in her courtship novels. She is a brilliant wordsmith who has had a transformative effect in literature by shifting the focus inward, using indirect speech to connect a character's inner thoughts with the narrator's voice. The psychological complexity she achieved paved the way for future writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and James Joyce.
Even though Austen's heroines live in the 18th century, they are unique in the way they struggle with who they are and their growing awareness of what they feel as opposed to what others tell them, which resonates greatly with modern readers. Romney explains it this way: “Austen's novels inspire reading and rereading and contemplation. She makes ordinary women feel extraordinary, that we are the protagonists of our own story. She formalizes it and gives us reason to believe it.”
As we approach 2025, at least one prediction is safe to make: our romance with Jane Austen shows no signs of abating.
(Answer: Frederick Tilney)
Haber is a writer, editor, and publishing strategist. She was the director of Oprah's Book Club and the magazine's books editor. Oh, Oprah Magazine.
