PORTRAIT COURTESY OF THE 19TH CENTURY RARE BOOK AND PHOTOGRAPH SHOP, STEVENSON, MARYLAND X1, ©JANE AUSTEN’S HOUSE MUSEUM X1, ALAMY X1, GETTY X1
Published anonymously and poorly known during her lifetime, by the early Victorian period Jane Austen was hopelessly outdated. Charlotte Brontë, admittedly Austen’s literary polar opposite, spent several letters describing her dislike of a world she saw as prim, proper and up-tight, “shrewd and observant” but whose “carefully fenced and highly cultivated gardens” saw “no glimpse of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air”.
Austen’s detractors remain, yet this summer, exactly 200 years since her death, hers will be the publicly endorsed face of the new ten-pound note. Subject of movies, books, TV, radio, graphic novels, apps, tourist trails, games, Bollywood-style reboots – even soft porn and zombies – she is more popular than ever and, unusually, as much for herself as her work.