ABSTRACT
This special issue of Women’s Writing is concerned with the changing approaches to Jane Austen, her writings, and her afterlives over the past 200 years. The issue reflects on and broadens our understanding of the cultural reach and reimaginings of Austen in view of the bicentennial celebrations of her published novels from 2011 to 2018. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how Austentatious, a one-hour comedy improvisation play of Austen’s “lost” works, blends Regency and twenty-first-century popular culture, narrative and gags, “Austenspeak” and modern slang, and ultimately parodies not only the original novels but the phenomenon of Austen adaptation itself. It explores the reception of Austen’s texts in the late nineteenth century, specifically through an analysis of introductions to editions published in the 1890s. The book investigates the element of escapism in Austen’s reception, from the first World War to twenty-first-century fanvids.
