Emma Woodhouse Is Your Friend

On the 200th anniversary of her death, Jane Austen is as hugely influential as ever. Her tales are re-imagined in every new media.

- Devoney Looser

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is in a literary class by herself. A moderately successful English novelist of the early nineteenth century, she’s now an international icon. This year, across the world, her fans seek ways to honour her at the bicentenary of her death. No doubt the extent of her celebrity would come as a surprise to her, particularly the global part. It’s believed that Austen never travelled outside of Britain, although her brothers—especially the two who served in the Royal Navy— certainly did. One, Charles Austen, died of cholera in Pyay during the Anglo-Burmese War.

Yet Austen’s novels would end up travelling far greater distances than any of her family members, translated into countless languages, from Polish, Persian, and Portuguese, to Tamil, Telugu and Turkish. At least 250 translated Austen editions had been published by 1977. That the novels first appeared in French, German, Danish, and Swedish in the 19th century may not shock, but that Austen’s fiction was available in Gujarati, Hindi, and Thai by the mid-twentieth century is significant. It gives us a sense of just how early she established an international readership. It cannot, of course, tell us how many readers abroad first encountered her fiction in the original English. There is much yet to learn about the history of what recent scholarly books call The Global Jane Austen and The Postcolonial Jane Austen—as well as what the journal Persuasions dubs ‘Global Austen Today’. (http://www.jasna. org/publications/persuasions-online/vol28no2?)