Janeite
Encyclopedia
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
as well as used as a term of opprobrium. According to Austen scholar Claudia Johnson
Claudia L. Johnson (scholar)
Claudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University; she is also currently chairperson of the English department. Johnson specializes in Restoration and 18th-century British literature, with an especial focus on the novel. She is also interested in feminist...
Janeitism is "the self-consciously idolatrous enthusiasm for 'Jane' and every detail relative to her".
Janeitism did not begin until after the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen
A Memoir of Jane Austen
A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh...
in 1870, when the literary elite felt that they had to separate their appreciation of Austen from that of the masses. The term Janeite was originally coined by the literary scholar George Saintsbury
George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury , was an English writer, literary historian, scholar and critic.-Biography:...
in his 1894 introduction to a new edition of Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...
. As Austen scholar Deidre Lynch explains, "he meant to equip himself with a badge of honor he could jubilantly pin to his own lapel". In the early twentieth century, Janeitism was "principally a male enthusiasm shared among publishers, professors, and literati". Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
even published a short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
entitled "Janeites"
Debits and Credits (Kipling)
Debits and Credits is a collection of fourteen stories, nineteen poems and two scenes from a play by Rudyard Kipling. The collection was first published in 1926. Four of the poems are translations of odes by Horace...
about a group of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
soldiers who were fans of Austen's novels.
During the 1930s and 1940s, when Austen's works were canonized
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
and accepted within the academy, the term began to change meaning. It was used to signify those who appreciated Austen in the "wrong" way and the term, according to Lynch, is "now used almost exclusively about and against other people" [emphasis in original].
Modern Janeites are often described in the same tones as Trekkies
Trekkies
Trekkies is a 1997 documentary film directed by Roger Nygard about the devoted fans of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek franchise. Starring Denise Crosby , the movie contains interviews with Star Trek devotees, more commonly known as Trekkies...
and are, according to Johnson, "derided and marginalized by dominant cultural institutions bent on legitimizing their own objects and protocols of expertise". However, this may be changing as scholars such as Johnson and Lynch study "the ludic enthusiasm of [the] amateur reading clubs, whose 'performances' include teas, costume balls, games, readings, and dramatic representations, staged with a campy anglophilia
Anglophilia
An Anglophile is a person who is fond of English culture or, more broadly, British culture. Its antonym is Anglophobe.-Definition:The word comes from Latin Anglus "English" via French, and is ultimately derived from Old English Englisc "English" + Ancient Greek φίλος - philos, "friend"...
in North America, and a brisker antiquarian meticulousness in England, and whose interests range from Austenian dramatizations, to fabrics, to genealogies, and to weekend study trips". Lynch has described committed Janeites as members of a cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
, comparing their travels to places Austen lived or places described in her novels or their adaptations as pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
s, for example. She argues that such activities provide "a kind of time-travel to the past, because they preserve an all but vanished Englishness
Culture of England
The culture of England refers to the idiosyncratic cultural norms of England and the English people. Because of England's dominant position within the United Kingdom in terms of population, English culture is often difficult to differentiate from the culture of the United Kingdom as a whole...
or set of 'traditional' values....This may demonstrate the influence of a sentimental account of Austen's novels that presents them as means by which readers might go home again – to a comfortable, soothingly normal world."