Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Jane Austen Trivia
The use of the term “Janeites” to describe Austen’s fans dates from at least the early twentieth century. While most Austen fans today are women, early Janeites were often men. Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story called “The Janeites” about a group of World War I soldiers who were closet Austen fanatics. A 2008 survey of Austen fans found that Janeites included roofers, bartenders, Dominican friars, truckers, zookeepers, and farmers.
James Edward Austen-Leigh’s 1869 memoir of his aunt sanitized Austen’s sauciness. Austen-Leigh changed the wording of some of her letters to protect her image and his audience’s sensibilities, as in “I was as civil to them as circumstances would allow,” instead of the original (and much funnier) “I was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow.”
A man named Harris Bigg-Wither has the somewhat unfortunate distinction of being remembered by history as the man Jane Austen dumped. Bigg-Wither, an Oxford grad who is generally described in all historical accounts as an unattractive stammerer, proposed to Austen while she was visiting his sisters in 1802. She initially said yes, then changed her mind the next morning. Her niece later wrote: “Mr Wither was very plain in person—awkward, and even uncouth in manner—nothing but his size to recommend him.”
While most Austen fans today are women, early Janeites were often men.
MEN
To gay men, Jane Austen was the Judy Garland of the 1910s
(Source: shmoop.com)
