Bicentennial Essays on Jane Austen’s Afterlives

This collection is concerned with the changing approaches to Jane Austen, her writings, and her afterlives, over the past two hundred years. It reflects on, and broadens understanding of, the cultural reach and reimaginings of Austen in view of the bicentennial celebrations of her published novels from 2011 to 2018.The ten contributors to this collection re-engage with key debates over Austen, her continuing appeal and significance as an author and a lucrative brand, and her cultural ubiquity. These essays are concerned with Austen’s national and international reputation; her critical reception; creative appropriations of her writings; and Austen’s afterlives in popular culture, in visual media, in ephemeral publications, in stage, in film, and in musical versions. Together, these essays by experts from across the UK, North America, Australia, and Scandinavia advance innovative readings of Austen’s novels and her transmedia legacies and shed new light on some of the complex reception processes that emerge from the study of this enduringly popular author. They also set out possible paths for scholarship on Austen in coming years.This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s Writing.

Annika Bautz is Associate Professor of English and Head of the School of Humanities and Performing Arts at Plymouth University, UK. Her publications include The Reception of Jane Austen and Walter Scott (2007), as well as essays on Edward Bulwer-Lytton, George Eliot, library history, and other aspects of the history of the book in the Romantic and Victorian periods.Sarah Wootton is a Professor of English Studies at Durham University, UK. Her research focuses on the afterlives of nineteenth-century writers in fiction, art, and screen adaptation. She is the author of Consuming Keats: Nineteenth-Century Representations in Art and Literature (2006) and Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing and Screen Adaptation (2016), and the winner of the Elma Dangerfield Prize.