Austenolatry

Cathleen Schine, for the New York Review of Books blog, writes about our collective love affair with Jane Austen.

From the piece...

I particularly like Stephen’s term Austenolatry. I think you can date this latest wave of Austenolatry to 1995 when Clueless, the brilliant film adaptation of Emma, came out. Emma is my favorite Jane Austen novel, one of my favorite novels period, a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong. I worship at the Austenolatry shrine in general, but even so, I was not prepared for how deeply moved I was by the Morgan’s exhibit.

There, among a collection of prints from Austen’s time, of illustrations from her books, early editions, a rough copy of her first novel, Susan, with corrections and excisions squeezed in between the narrow lines of exquisite handwriting, were several of her letters.

And though I was ready to be overwhelmed by seeing some of the letters by one of the greatest novelists in history written in her own hand, I didn’t anticipate how intimate an experience it would be.