The Making of Jane Austen

Image source: Arizona State University

She was not born, but rather became, Jane Austen. (p. 1)

In her introduction to The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), scholar Devoney Looser consciously echoes Simone de Beauvoir's "On ne naît pas femme: on le devient" (One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman). All of the novels issued during Austen's lifetime were published anonymously, and in their initial appearance achieved only modest success. After her death in 1817 her novels went out of print until the 1830s. And yet today, as scholar Claire Harman wrote in her own book on the posthumous creation of Austen's reputation, Jane's Fame (Henry Holt, 2009), "her six completed novels are among the best-known, best-loved, most-read works in the English language" (p. xv). How did this happen?

We might think we know the general outline of Austen's rediscovery by later generations. A late-Victorian surge of interest was sparked by the publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in 1870 (a second expanded edition followed the next year), the Letters of Jane Austen by her great-nephew Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne) in 1884, and the best-selling "Peacock Edition" of Pride and Prejudice illustrated by Hugh Thomson in 1894:

Image source: Internet Archive

Then came the mid-20th-century revival of interest after the 1923 publication of the scholarly Standard Edition of her writings edited by R.W. Chapman, and Hollywood's heavily altered 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. After another relative lull in Austen appreciation came the six-part Pride and Prejudice BBC series in 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, which fostered the contemporary mass audience for all things Austen.

Looser's book is a well-researched and lively reconsideration of this too-neat outline. She notes that although Hugh Thomson's illustrations (which rendered Austen's characters as though they were escapees from a Dickens novel) had lasting popularity, the first illustrator of Austen's novels was Ferdinand Pickering in 1833 (a correction of other sources' identification of the artist as George Pickering). Perhaps in a bid to make the novels seem more up-to-date, Pickering portrayed the female characters in 1830s styles: elaborate coiffures, high-brimmed bonnets, leg-of-mutton sleeves, tight bodices, narrow waists, and full skirts, in place of Regency simplicity of fashion. (Looser points out that Pickering's illustrations may have provided a template for the out-of-period costumes of the 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice.)

Elinor examines Lucy Steele's miniature of Edward Ferrars. Image source: Internet Archive

Looser also highlights the work of Christiana (Chris.) Hammond, the "first identifiably female illustrator of Jane Austen's novels" (p. 62), who among other scenes in Emma portrayed Jane Fairfax's father lying dead on a battlefield—a shocking reminder of the impact of events in the larger world on Austen's characters (particularly evident in the slavery subtext of Mansfield Park and the Napoleonic Wars background of Persuasion). Looser's consideration of the different Austen illustrators and their characteristic styles and scenes is a tantalizing glimpse of a subject that could easily justify a full-length book; eager readers await.

Austen adaptations did not begin with the BBC or Hollywood, of course. Looser offers a fascinating glimpse of turn-of-the-century amateur and professional Austen dramatizations. In 1899 the literary and theatrical Zeta Alpha Society of Wellesley College performed a Pride and Prejudice adaptation with an all-female cast, featuring alumna "Miss Willis" (Looser identifies her as almost certainly Clara Lucretia Willis, Class of '96) as a cross-dressed Darcy:

"A scene from 'Pride and Prejudice' as dramatized and performed at Wellesley," The Puritan, Vol. 8, No. 2, May 1900, as reproduced in The Making of Jane Austen (p. 103). Image source: HathiTrust.org

In The Wellesley Magazine Clara Willis' acting "in the very difficult rôle of Darcy" was singled out as being "especially artistic and finished," but the whole production was lauded:

Enough cannot be said in praise of the entire presentation. . .Every effort was put forward by the society to make the costuming and stage setting as accurate and artistic as possible, with the result that Wellesley has seldom seen more charming and finished dramatics than this presentation of Miss Jane Austen's delightful old novel. (The Wellesley Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 9, June 1899, pp. 475-476)

I'm guessing that Willis as a dashing Darcy is second from the right holding a top hat and the hand of his Elizabeth ("Miss Childs, '98"), while the other couple is Wickham ("Miss Smith, 1901") and Lydia ("Miss Ball, 1900")—at least, judging by his military-style coat and her frivolously feathered bonnet. (Looser doesn't speculate about the identities of the couples.)

There's a chapter on Rosina Filippi, an actress, director and performance teacher who in 1895 published Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-Room Performance. Filippi was continuing a tradition of adapting novels for private performance in which Austen herself may have participated: a dramatic adaptation of scenes from Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison exists in Austen's handwriting, and she is known to have appeared in family theatricals.

Looser writes that "Filippi's focus is on Austen's humor and on the villainous characters' delectable awfulness" (p. 89), such as the odious Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility discussing how little money he can get away with offering his dispossessed stepmother and half-sisters (the ultimate answer, of course, is none). Interestingly, only one of the seven scenes involves a pair of lovers, Emma and Mr. Knightley. The final two duologues showcase Elizabeth Bennet's strength of character: her refusal of Mr. Collins, and her confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Illustration by Miss Fletcher from Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen, arranged and adapted by Rosa Filippi. Image source: Internet Archive

Looser connects Filippi's dramatizations to the New Woman movement, saying that her Austen adaptations "gave expression to the idea that females are strong, capable, and intelligent" (p. 90).

The connection to progressive social movements, particularly women's suffrage, is even more evident in Filippi's later full-length play The Bennets, based, of course, on Pride and Prejudice. Given a performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1901, it was probably the first professional performance of an Austen adaptation. Playwright Filippi herself appeared onstage as Mrs. Bennet, while the actor portraying Elizabeth, Winifred Mayo, was one of the play's co-directors (the other was its Darcy, E. Harcourt Williams).

Later in the decade Mayo would become a leader of the Actresses' Franchise League, get arrested for participating in suffrage demonstrations, and publish the powerful article "Prison Experiences of a Suffragette" in The Idler magazine (1908). Mayo also became the first woman to portray Jane Austen herself in Cecily Hamilton's suffrage play A Pageant of Great Women (1909). Suffragists adopted Austen as an example of women's ability and achievement; Mary Lowndes designed a Jane Austen banner that was carried  in demonstrations, along with banners celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft (whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) may have inspired the plot of Sense and Sensibility) and Austen's favorites Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth.

Jane Austen Suffrage Banner, 1908, by Mary Lowndes. Photo credit: Women’s Library at the London School of Economics. Image source: LitHub.com

In "Prison Experiences of a Suffragette" Mayo writes of her first arrest, "I was still under the impression that you must do something illegal to get arrested" (The Idler, p. 86). Once that assumption was proved wrong, however, she seemed to have decided that as long as she was going to be arrested she might as well actually do something illegal: in November 1911 she participated in a Women's Social and Political Union stone-throwing campaign, breaking windows at the Guards Club in Pall Mall.

Her target was not chosen at random. Men's clubs were where members of Parliament, government officials, and leading cultural figures gathered. And as Looser points out, while the suffragists were marching through the streets carrying banners emblazoned with Austen's name, Austen was also being invoked by the suffragists' opponents inside the clubs as a contented exemplar of traditional women's roles. As Looser writes, "The invention of Jane Austen has been, and continues to be, a fraught public process" (p. 1).

Surprisingly, some of the anti-suffragist members of men's clubs thought of themselves as "Janeites." Today "Janeites" can be a somewhat disparaging term applied (mainly by men) to enthusiastic fans of Austen (mainly women); it is also a term avidly reclaimed by those enthusiastic fans. However, the term was first applied to the (mainly conservative) men who expressed admiration for her work, such as critic George Saintsbury, who first used the term in print in 1894, and the writers G.K. Chesterton and Rudyard Kipling.

"The Janeites," as published in Hearst's International, Vol. XLV, No. 5, May 1924, pp. 10-15, 152, 154. Image source: "Shakespeare and Beyond," Folger Shakespeare Library

Kipling's story "The Janeites," about WWI soldiers who form a secretive group devoted to her works, was published in Hearst's International magazine in 1924, the year after R.W. Chapman had completed his scholarly edition of Austen's writings and as she was becoming a fixture in schoolrooms and on college syllabi. However, scholarly and educational interest in Austen had emerged long before. According to Looser her novels had appeared on lists of recommended readings for schools beginning in 1838, and were highlighted in John Cordy Jeaffreson's Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria (1858)—so much for the Austen rediscovery not beginning until 1870. 

And so much for R.W. Chapman being the first to supply scholarly notes to Austen texts: in 1908 a Missouri schoolteacher, Josephine Heermans, produced an edition of Pride and Prejudice that involved textual comparison and correction, copious annotations, apposite quotations from Jane Austen's letters, a bibliography, suggestions for further study, and questions for classroom discussion or individual reflection. It was issued in the Macmillan Pocket Classics series and aimed at elementary and secondary school students, rather than an adult audience. But nonetheless, a scholarly and educational approach was taken, by a woman, to editing Austen's works 15 years before Chapman's Standard Edition. 

I've only touched on a few highlights from The Making of Jane Austen. Nearly every page offers intriguing surprises. My only regret is that the book isn't longer. In researching this post I discovered on IMDB.com that there were many early television adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that Looser doesn't mention, including the first, hour-long BBC adaptation from 1938 (!); a Philco Television Playhouse version from 1949 written by Samuel Taylor, later screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (it's quite the leap from Darcy and Elizabeth to Scotty and Madeleine); a Matinee Theatre adaptation from 1956 written by Helene Hanff, later of 84, Charing Cross Road fame; and an episode of the Canadian TV series Encounter in which Darcy was played by Patrick Macnee, later John Steed in The Avengers, and which was directed by Paul Almond, later producer and director of Michael Apted's Seven Up! (1964). A comprehensive critical companion to Austen theatrical, radio, film, and television adaptations is clearly needed. (Deborah Cartmell's Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: A Close Study of the Relationship Between Text and Film, Methuen, 2010, attempts this impossible project for screen versions of Austen's most popular novel.)

Each of us, whether illustrator, critic, editor, scholar, activist, educator, playwright, actor, enthusiast, or reader for pleasure, remakes Austen in our preferred image. We may no longer throw rocks through the windows of those who don't share our ideas about Austen, but perspectives on her are still fiercely contested. And there is a constant concern that she is becoming too popular, which essentially means that she is being discovered by people who don't like her in the same ways or for the same reasons that we do. 

One writer quoted by Looser asks, "What does this mean—that we are beginning to have a Jane Austen cult? How the idea would have amused the innocent subject of it all!" (p. 202). Was this written after all of the events and celebrations (of which the publication of Looser's book was one) marking the bicentenary of Austen's death in 2017? After the twelve months in 2004-2005 which saw Elizabeth Bennet played by both Kiera Knightley (in Pride & Prejudice) and Indian superstar Aishwarya Rai (as "Lalita" in Bride & Prejudice)? After the massive success of the 1995 BBC adaptation? No: it was written in 1898, when the first wave of Austen's popularity was still building. As Looser writes in her concluding chapter,

Henry James worried that commercializing Austen had run amok by 1905. . .Today's Jane Austen societies have not stained her good character by introducing cosplay. People have been dressing up as Austen, on stage and at society parties, for more than a century. . .Every previous blow that Jane Austen's reputation has supposedly endured at the hands of popular audiences who would sully her has failed to rub her out. Reports of Jane Austen's posthumous death have been recurrently exaggerated. (p. 222)

Let's hope that it will always be so.