Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom

A really interesting overview of Jane Austen fandom touching upon the cross-roads of popular fandom and scholarly criticism.

I absolutely love Jane Austen's books, but I wouldn't call myself a Janeite. Still, I was curious and Degrees of Affection thought highly enough to recommend it as worth reading. I tend to read non-fiction right before going to sleep, and this book was perfect for that; each chapter looks at a different facet of Jane Austen's appeal and how a love for her books has directed the course of many lives in unique directions. As none of the chapters are overly long, it was easy to pick up the book each night, read a chapter or two, and put the book down with a sense of completion.

As I said, I wouldn't call myself a show more Janeite; when it comes to books, I'm a live-in-the-moment kind of reader; books don't often haunt me after I've finished them (maybe that's why I so enjoy re-reading good books?). But it would seem there's a little bit of the rabid fan in me, as I discovered when I got to chapter 7 "Austen Therapy". I could start going on at this point about child rearing in Regency England amongst the monied class, but that would drag this on forever, so let me just sum it up by saying this:

Mr. Darcy is NOT on the spectrum!!!!

Which leads me to my favorite quote of the book: "You know, sometimes people aren't autistic, they're just dicks."***

I was surprised at how strongly I reacted to this chapter - the previous chapter discussing Arnie Perlstein's theory about "shadow stories" in each of Jane Austen's works I found merely absurd, but this chapter actually made me – not angry – but..exasperated.

Still I really enjoyed the writing of the book; the author remains mostly neutral throughout, and I found the biographies of the fans Ms. Yaffe focussed on intriguing. An excellent read.

*** Please note that I do not in any way disparage the legitimacy of the autistic spectrum, or those that find themselves struggling with autism to any degree. I save my disparagement for those that want to plug everyone they meet (or read) into a diagnostic hole. Sometimes people are just rude, ill-bred, or in Darcy's case, a product of their times, class and cultural mores. show less

Suddenly I find myself wanting to order a tailor-made Regency gown, re-read every Jane Austen novel and spend a week on the fan sites and blogs about her.

I want to go to JASNA! (Please imagine me crying this out in this manner) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8O8CmVi5Y8
More accurately (just didn't have the same ring to it) I want to go to the Jane Austen Society of North America's next Annual General Meeting, which is more of a blast than it sounds, if Deborah Yaffe's description is in any way accurate.

Oh boy oh boy, this book was such a treat. Yaffe started the book describing how her own love of Jane Austen started and the rest of the book was the research, interviews and travel she did in the year leading up to the JASNA AGM in show more Fort Worth, Texas. She interviewed Janeites of every stripe, from professors to fan fiction authors (and of course she had to read a lot of Jane Austen fan fiction too—it made me so happy that she didn't poo-poo it), from obsessive bloggers to collectors of Austen memorabilia (one lady bought a lock of Austen's hair!). She went on a Jane Austen tour, visiting where she had lived and sites of film adaptations (I also want to do this, by the way, if anyone's looking for the perfect birthday gift for me). Every chapter was interesting, well-written and respectful of the different ways people understand and appreciate Austen. Her words in her last chapter sum this up nicely.

We are a tribe, we Janeites. We name our children and our pets after people who never existed, treat an elderly screenwriter like a rock star, and seek twenty-first century life lessons in two-hundred-year-old books, or the tarot cards based on them. Our love for Jane Austen unites us, and yet sometimes it seems that we all love something, or someone, different...We make our Austen into a reflection of our own preoccupations, a teller of our own stories...The rich diversity of responses to Austen captures something real about her—the depth and complexity of her writings, which like diamonds held up to sunlight, reflect something different from every angle.

I spent a summer reading Jane Austen while I was hiking The Camino de Santiago in France and Spain with my husband in 1996. Like many, I caught the fever after watching the BBC miniseries with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I remember getting it one or two tapes (yeah, I'm that old) at a time with a friend and doing a small cheer when the library had the last couple on hand right when we were ready for them. I read Northanger Abbey before my hiking trip and finished Sense and Sensibility about the time we realized we were going to have to skip most of the French side of the route. An Australian couple we met on the hike traded us a guide to the Spanish route for our copy of Sense and Sensibility . In cities along the route, I would pick up my next Jane Austen book, read it when we'd stopped for the day, and when I was done, I would leave it behind in one the pilgrim refuges where we stayed. I wonder how many people passed those books around as they hiked the Camino. Maybe they're still in circulation. At the end of the trip, I had a surprise treat. We spent a couple of nights in England before flying out of London for home. An unplanned excursion to Winchester Cathedral landed me where Austen was buried. What a special way to end my summer of Austen. Reading about other Jane Austen fans and their experiences brought this all back to me, and will probably cause anyone who reads it to smile and remember too. show less

Fan non-fiction about fan fiction, cosplay, scholarship centered on Jane Austen -- and I thought Trekkies were eccentric and uber-passionate! Ms. Jaffe, a journalist, is an avowed Janeite herself and she set out to find a common thread among the wide array of fans who worship all things Austen. She interviewed other fans, explored fan fiction, traveled to England for an Austen pilgrimage, and attended meetings of the Jane Austen Society of North America. The latter organization throws an annual ball in which the guests dress in Regency style and try to out-Austen each other; Ms. Yaffe joined in. Ms. Jaffe's writing is excellent, a dose humor with a lot of facts and some good observations about human nature, in general, and its many show more manifestations among the Janeites. Overall, an entertaining read. show less

I think Among the Janeites is a book that belongs on many-a Janeites shelves. The casual Janeite, the one who just likes a swoony read staring a certain Austen hero from time to time, may not feel so compelled to have this book, but for the rest of us (the ones who would totally dress up for a JASNA ball, or have watched every adaptation more than once, and are ready to debate any aspect of Austendom at the drop of a kidglove), this shouldn't just be a wanted addition to our shelves, but a needed one. 'Cause the thing is - this is about us. You will recognize yourself in these pages. And Among the Janeites isn't some stuffy outsider's look at "those crazy/lonely women" who "sit at home with the pause button on Colin Firth in clingy show more pants." It was written by one of us.

Well, I should clarify a touch - Deborah Yaffe is most assuredly a lifelong Janeite, but there is an occasional sneering quality to the writing (in the beginning, especially). This at first kind of bothered me, but then started to really amuse me - in a weird way, it felt really true, and since it changed as the book progressed, losing some of its biting edge, it started to represent the journey of becoming a full-fledged, card-carrying Janeite. By this I mean, in the beginning of the book, as we're learning about Yaffe herself and why she decided to write the book, there is occasionally this judgmental tone that creeps in: an, Oh, you're one of those Janeites... That tone that says, You don't really like Jane, you don't really understand her - you just like wet-shirted Colin Firths and I ♥ Darcy coffee mugs. That tone that says, I would never lower myself to dressing up in an Empire-waist dress and frolicking about a ballroom. That tone that says, I would never read all those fan-fictions with their inappropriate Darcy/Lizzie sexytimes and their mangling of Austen's language and stories. That tone. It wasn't over-riding, but it was there.
BUT THEN.

But then, Yaffe did read the fanfictions. She did order a custom-made Empire-waist dress. She decided, if she was going to do this, she was going to do this, and she dove in head first. And That Tone started to slip away... And this was so very perfect a representation of the trajectory of a "typical" Janeite - that haughty, "no one can love her like I love her" air, sliding into shameless fandom - that I was positively tickled. I've been that sneering Janeite; most of us have, and some of us will never stop being that Janeite. Some of us even shudder at the very word Janeite, for fear that we'll be lumped in with THOSE PEOPLE. (But then, some of us take our Jane Austen action figures on vacation with us, so...) But as Yaffe learned,  there really is room for all types within the fandom, and as crazy as we are, we all bring a little something to the table. And that slightly-judgy tone in the beginning of the book didn't really bother me so much anymore because, hell, been there, done that. If you'd asked me 6 years ago if I would ever read a Jane Austen fanfiction, I'd have laughed in your face. Needless to say, times have changed. ;) (Not about the dressing up part, though, because I have always and will always be down for that.)

I love how Yaffe dove in and did all those things she never thought she'd do. I love how she committed and tried everything, talked to everybody. And I love all the people she met, how very different they all were - the only thing most of them have in common, really, is their passion, and I love that some of those people maintained their academic, somewhat sneering attitude, but it didn't mean they love Austen any less (or any more), just that they love her differently. We all do, in our way. That's what's so amazing about Jane Austen, about her as a fandom - there are so many ways to love her, to lover her stories, her characters. There are so many ways to be a Janeites. I met a lot of fellow Janeites in the pages of this book, and I felt like I knew them, different as they all were. They felt homey to me, and some of them I wanted very badly to meet (or, you know, be for a bit. Why didn't I help starts a bajillion-dollar networking company, and then use my money to freaking buy Chawton Great House, and also Urban Decay? A) Why wasn't I aware that the founder of one of my favorite makeup brands was a massive Janeite, and B) How do I become this person?)  I learned things about Austen and about the fandom that I never knew. I added to my list of Janeite Things I Must Do.  And more importantly, since this is first and foremost a book, I was amused while doing so. The writing is engaging, thorough without being bogged down, passionate but with enough reserve to assess and describe a situation. It works equally-well as a piece of non-fiction and as an enjoyable read, and I have to praise Yaffe for that.
Like I said, it's a book that deserves a spot in your Janeite collection. show less

I don't remember when I first read Pride and Prejudice but I suspect I was fairly young given the look of my loopy signature on the inside cover. I do, however, know for sure that I fell in love with it and it inspired me to read all of Austen's other works as well. I've read most of them more than once and have thrilled to the language and the story every time. I have seen several of the movies inspired by Austen's works and have been known to enjoy the spate of fiction reworking the originals in modern times or written as sequels. Does this make me an avid fan, a Janeite? Maybe. But I am not a Janeite like the people chronicled in Deborah Yaffe's new light and fun nonfiction, Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane show more Austen Fandom. They are incredibly devoted and enthusiastic, integrating Austen into many, many parts of their lives.

Yaffe herself is a self-professed Janeite and she is curious to trace the different sorts of people drawn to Austen and the ways in which their love for her works becomes so huge and influential for them. She interviews some of the folks most well known in JASNA (the Jane Austen Society of North America), examines the rise of Austen fan fiction, orders a ball gown for the AGM (Annual General Meeting of JASNA), and generally chronicles the unexpected ways in which Austen mania has manifested, especially in recent times with the advent of the movies bringing scores more fans, who may or may not ever read the originals on which the movies are based. As she goes about revealing the various ways in which people feed their Austen cravings, she is certainly focused on the most devoted fans: those who have created a business that relies on Austen or her times, those who spend untold amounts of money dressing authentically or recreating the time, those who spend hours upon hours online chatting with other devotees or traveling to all the places important in Austen's life, the Cisco founder who is paying (for 125 years) to preserve Chawton so others can experience one of Jane's homes, and so on. And as she interviews these super fans, she is always respectful of them, regardless of how unlikely and off the wall they might seem to others.

Yaffe does include her own adventures in sinking a bit deeper into the world of the Janeites, going on an Austen tour, having her own gown made for the ball, sharing her disappointment over the huge numbers of fans flocking to all things Austen, and more. What she doesn't do here is to discuss the books much, nor does she spend a lot of time analyzing the people she's interviewed so the book is not a scholarly look at Austen's works and the rise of her incredibly devoted fan base. But neither of those things are Yaffe's stated purpose; she wrote and researched this initially because she just wanted to see where she fit within the ever growing world of Jane Austen enthusiasts. And she has succeeded marvelously. Some of it makes her a little uncomfortable and some of it seems a tad excessive but overall, she seems to have found the place within the Janeite world where she is happiest. This is a fun and entertaining insider's view of the strange and wonderful (and sometimes wacky) world of Janeites. For those who aren't already Austen fans, this might be a bit of a confounding book but for those who appreciate Austen themselves, even if they are a fan, like me, of a much less flamboyant and vocal variety, this is a delightful romp. show less

First, I am not a Jane Austin fan. I read Pride and Prejudice, disliked it, but went back to it 30 years later to give it another chance and still disliked it. I haven't read any of her other books. But I still found this book fascinating. Excellent reporting about what makes people become passionate fans and how it influences their lives. Yaffe choose excellent people to profile -ordinary people (with the exception of one of the founders of Cisco) with problems - and showed how being passionate about something and part of a community can help with those problems. And, as a Janeite herself, she presented them sympathetically but still honestly. - noting, in some cases, where people had truly gone overboard. And there is a considerable show more amount of humor here - especially as she decides to dress herself in costume for one of the conference balls. Highly recommended for anyone - not just Jane Austin fans. show less

Deborah Yaffe grew up loving books, even breaking school rules about reading in gym class, but nothing compared to her early love for Jane Austen. Before the internet allowed fans to easily connect with one another and the infamous Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice put Jane Austen on everyone's reading list, Yaffe's obsession felt very personal. It wasn't until she discovered the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) that she realized she was not alone in her love for the author; in fact there were thousands of "Janeites" throughout the world, many with stories much more extreme than her own.

In Among the Janeites, Deborah Yaffe explores into the Jane Austen fandom from both the inside and the outside. Though a regular show more attendee of JASNA conferences, for the first time Yaffe spends hundreds of dollars on a period costume to wear to the conference ball. She also travels to Jane Austen's Chawton home in England with a group of Janeites in a sort of pilgrimage, aiming to walk the same paths as their favorite author. Yaffe talks to several others: famous fan fiction writers, people with outrageous theories, a man deciphering what he believes to be a secret code found in Austen's work.

Even those with minimal Austen knowledge simply curious about an extreme group of fans will find a great deal to enjoy in Among the Janeites. Without ever shutting out the casual reader nor chastising the Janeites for their excessive enthusiasm, Deborah Yaffe's book celebrates both Jane Austen and the impact the written word can have on all of us.

Blog: www.rivercityreading.com show less