By Sarah Hurley, Jane Austen Summer Program
May 21, 2025
Nearly two hundred and fifty years after her birth, Jane Austen’s writing continues to inspire, delight, and whisk Janeites into the dazzling world of regency England, inspiring a broad range of fandom activity. Imitative Austenian literature—adaptations, spin-offs, and retellings of Austen’s work—permeate global pop-culture as well as serious literary scholarship. However, while scholars of Austenian fanfiction have often focused on narratives that reimagine or complicate the lives of Austen’s fictional characters, or even Austen herself, fewer have examined narratives that incorporate the Janeite as a literary heroine.
In 2023, I completed my undergraduate Honors thesis, “Let Other Pens Dwell: On Austen, Authorship, and the Janeite-Centric Narrative,” which examines the Janeite protagonist figure as a metaphor for the real-life Janeite. Janeite-centric narratives encompass some of the most ambitious and diverse Austenian fanfiction, constituting a metafictional union of adaptation and self-insert fanfiction which no other author seems to have inspired on such a widespread scale to date. Beginning with Rudyard Kipling’s 1924 short story “The Janeites,” featuring a secret society of World War I soldiers devoted to Austen’s work, the tradition of Janeite-centric fiction extends to popular contemporary media such as the ITV miniseries Lost in Austen (2008) and Shannon Hale’s novel-turned-Hollywood-blockbuster Austenland (2008; 2013).
Ultimately, “Let Other Pens Dwell” argues that the Janeite-centric protagonist is a fictional allegory for the ways in which real-life Janeites immerse themselves in—and subsequently revise—Austen’s fictional landscape, suggesting that authorship is an inherently intertextual, collaborative, and ongoing process. Some critics have argued that readers gravitate to modern Austenian spin-offs or adaptations because they regard Austen’s novels as a source of advice or self-help for dating and family life, but I contend that Janeite-centric narratives more often challenge than confirm Austen’s real-world relevance and applicability. Despite the Janeite heroine’s love and respect for Austen as a “divine” figure, almost every Janeite protagonist ultimately finds fault with some aspect of Austen’s fictional universe, which they must endeavor to correct themselves as they assume the role of active participant in the text.
For instance, the climax of Lost in Austen—a delightful romp through Pride and Prejudice in which modern Janeite Amanda Price accidentally replaces Elizabeth Bennet in the novel’s fictional world, flubbing several major plot points in the process—sees its Austen-loving heroine rip her beloved paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice to shreds, tossing the pieces into a lake at Pemberley Estate in a fit of rage. Rage at Mr. Darcy for having revoked his proposal of marriage to her; rage at Austen for having been fooled by her romanticized account of the glitz and glamour of life in Elizabeth Bennet’s Hertfordshire. This violent act parallels Amanda’s literal meddling with Pride and Prejudice’s plot throughout the series.
When Darcy discovers the soggy, ruined paperback on his property, he is horrified to find a seemingly farcical account of his life and incorrectly assumes that “Jane Austen” must be Amanda’s own penname: “What jaundiced impertinence is this?” he demands. “No wonder nothing about you seems plausible. Is your name Price, or is it Austen?”
Despite the technical inaccuracy of context in which Darcy equates Amanda with Austen, the connection gives viewers permission to accept Amanda’s authorial agency alongside Austen’s, and to temporarily canonize Amanda’s version of events. By rejecting Austen as an omnipotent, God-like authority over Pride and Prejudice’s narrative, Amanda gains the courage to rewrite it according to her own ideas and fantasies.
Under Amanda’s guidance, Pride and Prejudice becomes a novel in which Jane Bennet divorces Mr. Collins to marry Bingley in America, Charlotte Lucas departs from England to become a missionary in Africa, and the “greatest love story ever told” crumbles as Elizabeth Bennet decides to reside permanently in twenty-first century London, relishing the luxuries of running water, television, and the internet. Following the basic tenants of Janeite-coded wish-fulfillment, Darcy apologizes to Amanda, and they decide to marry after all, with Amanda moving permanently to the fictional world of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
The self- or reader-insert format of this miniseries positions the viewers to imagine themselves as Amanda, a Janeite whose ultimate Austen fantasy has just come true—she becomes the heroine of her very own Austen novel and lives Happily Ever After with Mr. Darcy.
Amanda, and the Janeite protagonist at large, acts as a metaphor for the real-world Janeite who immerses herself in and revises Austen’s texts, prompting readers to envision Austen’s texts as malleable and subject to alteration. Understanding the reader as an active agent in accepting or rejecting—constructing or de-constructing—a text’s canonical narrative lays the groundwork for understanding authorship at large as a collaborative and intertextual process.
Janeite-centric narratives endorse the authorial interventions that Janeite fan-practices model, presenting Austen’s texts as fluid rather than stable entities. The Janeite heroine’s participatory nature demonstrates the real-life Janeite’s desire to interact with Austen’s fictional landscape, differing from adaptations and spin-offs which focus on a narrative separate from its author or fanbase. Lost in Austen is unique in featuring a protagonist who physically alters Pride and Prejudice’s fundamental plotline, but Janeites interact with Austen’s texts in countless ways every day, always prepared to fill in the gaps—or “step in as the star,” in Amanda’s words—where Austen’s original material is found lacking.
In Mansfield Park, Austen writes: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.” While this quote cheekily informs the reader that Austen’s novel will have a happy ending, it might as well also act as a literal invitation to her readers to explore those other, perhaps more “odious subjects” in her stead. If humans, according to Kathleen Flynn’s Janeite-centric novel The Jane Austen Project (2017), are indeed merely “vessels” for “eternal art,” the storyteller is irrelevant compared to the story itself.
Thus, to interact with Austen’s fictional landscape in a way that is authentic, generative, and dynamic, real-life Janeites—like their fictional counterparts—must not be afraid to take up one of Austen’s foretold “other pens” and write their own happy endings.