Unexpectedly Austen
Jane Austen’s appeal is widespread, with praise of her work sometimes coming from unexpected sources.
Throughout 2025, the 250th anniversary of the year Austen was born, we’ll be sharing tributes to and reflections on Austen and her work by well-known members of the public. Some of these people will be familiar; other tributes will be from people you may not have thought of as fans.
It’s been a delight to collect these tributes and reflections. Some have been written in response to invitations we sent out, while others have been gathered from previously published sources. We’ll share these quotations here in monthly installments.
—Liz Philosophos Cooper and Sarah Emsley, co-editors
May
This month’s installment of “Unexpectedly Austen” features reflections on strong connections with Jane Austen and her characters—three from bestselling authors and one from a zookeeper who describes an orangutan’s passion for Pride and Prejudice. In the reflection she composed for the series, Natalie Jenner writes of turning to Jane Austen as a companion through difficult times. Kevin Kwan says he feels as if Austen’s characters are members of his own family, while Shannon Hale describes Austen’s readers and fans claiming her as their best friend. Michael Krause of Gdansk Zoo, in Poland, speaks of reading 50 pages of Pride and Prejudice aloud daily to Albert the orangutan to help him go to sleep.
Natalie Jenner: “personally indebted”
I don’t know if any author has ever been more influenced by Jane Austen, or more personally indebted. When my husband was diagnosed in 2017 with a rare and deadly lung disease, the only books I could read were hers. When life somewhat stabilized, I took a solo trip to Chawton so that I could walk in Austen’s footsteps and thank her for helping me through such a difficult time. When I subsequently wrote my first novel in ten years, after decades of trying to get published, it was fully and firmly about Jane. When that book, The Jane Austen Society, became an international bestseller during the earliest months of the pandemic, I found myself zooming and corresponding with readers around the world, all of us connected by our love for Austen. But my gratitude doesn’t end there. The day I handed in my third novel to my publisher and started my fourth, a fictionalized account of Admiral Sir Francis Austen and his correspondence with a Boston family devoted to his sister’s books, my doctor called to tell me I had cancer. Immediately I knew what I had to do as I prepared for more surgery and the uncertainty ahead: I needed to again lose myself in the world of Jane, where I would find sustenance, resilience, and hope. And I did. I always will. That is what Jane Austen means to me.
Natalie Jenner is the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and the upcoming Austen at Sea.
Kevin Kwan: “members of my family”
I felt this connection between her characters, this very real connection between, especially, the women of Jane Austen and my childhood and my family Singapore. So many of the women reminded me of the aunts I grew up with . . . I felt like I was reading about members of my family.
Kevin Kwan is an American novelist. Born in Singapore, he grew up in Texas. His first novel, Crazy Rich Asians, was published in 2013, and a film adaptation was released in 2018. He and other authors spoke about Austen in conversation with Alexandra Schwartz at a Celebration of Jane Austen at the 92nd Street Y in March 2025.
Shannon Hale: “our best friend”
We her loyal readers don’t wonder whether or not Austen was beautiful—we already know. She wasn’t a starlet and she wasn’t a hag. She was a woman, just like us, sorta pretty and sorta plain, who sometimes caught an admiring eye but often didn’t, who mostly spent the party at the side of the room, observing, exchanging witty remarks, and laughing herself sick with a best friend. Us. Whenever we’re reading her books, we shamelessly claim Jane Austen as our best friend. And if she were ever to ask us, “How do I look?” We’d say without hesitation, “Jane honey, you look divine.”
Shannon Hale is a bestselling and award-winning American author well known for her young adult fantasy novels. Her first novel for adults, Austenland, was made into a film in 2013. She wrote about “Our Friend Jane” in a blog post on her website.
Albert the orangutan: passionate about Pride and Prejudice
Bornean Orangutan, © Ridwan0810,
CC BY-SA 4.0
Albert’s favourite book is Pride and Prejudice, while his partner Raya likes German fiction. But they both like cookery books. When we’re doing dramatic readings they like me to act out all the movements. . . . If you gave them a fruit snack they’d throw it around, if you tried to wear them out with play, they’d just get hyper. I didn’t know what to do until I pulled out a book I was reading during a break and within a couple of minutes they were trying to read over my shoulder. Now they go to bed quietly and peacefully as long as they get their stories.
Michael Krause, Albert’s keeper at Gdansk Zoo, spoke about Albert’s obsession with Pride and Prejudice in an article by Sam Webb in the Daily Mail, quoted in Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine (January/February 2013). Krause also shows Albert and Raya film adaptations of their favorite books.
April
George Elliott Clarke, former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and an award-winning author and professor, wrote a tribute for “Unexpectedly Austen” about Jane Austen’s lasting legacy. This month’s installment also includes quotations from bestselling novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid and award-winning author and professor Azar Nafisi on the enduring appeal of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
George Elliott Clarke: “Jane Austen is deathless”
Photo © Harvard University
Jane Austen is deathless; I mean, she is as continuously relevant as scripture because she posits—as indelibly as do Platonists and patriarchs—that the sustenance of a civilization depends on how the sexes come to mate and propagate the next generation—via love, lust, and/or lucre. In her fiction, Austen applies this insight of Sheng Min: “the candour of a House is its longevity” (Ezra Pound’s translation). Thus, dynasties arise and are perpetuated only if morals guide carnal impulses and ethics guide material satisfactions. Effective family formation requires mutual devotion, yes, but also the writ of law, the blessing of clergy, and the well-administered piggybank. The Austen heroine is always—eventually—the respected and wise wife that Proverbs 31 celebrates. In authoring The Motorcyclist (2016), a novel based on my late father’s diary-recorded amours of 1959, the year of my conception, I soon saw that Austen’s staging of class-conflicted coitus had to drive my story about a Black Haligonian railway worker and wanna-be artist employing his BMW motorcycle, dubbed “Elizabeth II,” to entice various gals into “deliciously” compromising positions. Despite his handsome aspect, seductive patter, and comfy lair, however, my hero, Carl A. Black, soon learns that supposedly “available,” Negro maids can be scooped up by greenback-laden, Af-Am sailors, while bourgeois-aspiring, Coloured co-eds can be whisked away by Carib students from tony households. He’s in possession of a motorcycle and in want of a wife, but only becomes a husband by first becoming (accidentally) a father—thereby marrying up.
The pioneer scholar of the field of African/Black Canadian Literature, George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, and is also a revered poet (with books translated into Chinese, Italian, and Romanian), novelist, opera librettist, and playwright.
Taylor Jenkins Reid: “absolutely unbeatable”
I’ve read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice so many times, but I am also ravenous for any adaptation or retelling. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, as archetypes, are absolutely unbeatable.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is an American essayist and novelist best known for her novels Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She named Pride and Prejudice as one of “The books of my life” for The Guardian.
Azar Nafisi: “news that remains news”
From [Jane Austen] I also learnt that you need to be deserving of true love, ready to see through the eyes of your beloved not just your strength but your flaws, love opened Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s eyes to their own prejudice and pride. Their story also proves the truth of the poet Ezra Pound’s claim that, “Literature is news that remains news.”
Azar Nafisi is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature, best known for her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. She wrote about Austen in an article for The Guardian on “why we need to cherish rather than ban books.”
March
Our March collection of reflections on Jane Austen includes Jeanne Birdsall’s description of ways in which Austen’s work influenced the creation of her award-winning middle-grade novels about the Penderwick family, along with comments from Taylor Swift, who names Ang Lee’s adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as a source of inspiration, and Ian McEwan and Margaret Drabble, whose novels have been influenced by Austen’s.
Jeanne Birdsall: “my lodestones”
Every book I read, good or bad, burrows into my brain. To keep the bad ones from affecting my writing, I systematically purge them. After I read The Valley of the Dolls—research for an upcoming book—I needed to devour the Earthsea series plus My Mutual Friend to rid myself of Jacqueline Susann.
The good books I read over and over, hoping they’ll improve my work. Of these, Jane Austen’s are among my favorites, my lodestones. I don’t try to emulate her—that would be foolish and arrogant—but do slip her in when I can. In my saga of a family named Penderwick, one character reads Sense and Sensibility while another (named Jane) writes a play called Sisters and Sacrifice, a possible alternate title for Austen’s book, though I didn’t figure that out until it had settled into my manuscript.
A few more attempts, including adapting a Lady Catherine de Bourgh scene for my own use, didn’t make it past my editor. (Her note in the margin of my manuscript: What are you doing?) My boldest move did succeed, naming the youngest of the five Penderwick sisters Lydia. It’s my gesture of sympathy for Lydia Bennet, compelled by society to placidly wait at home until her four elder sisters found husbands. Running away with Wickham was an immoral shortcut, but not an illogical one. That said, Lydia Penderwick won’t be trotting off with a scalawag at fifteen. She has better sense, and wouldn’t settle for a Wickham at any age.
Jeanne Birdsall is a New York Times bestselling and National Book Award winning author of books for children, including The Penderwicks series.
Taylor Swift: “very specific film memories”
For the next record I was nonstop watching Sense and Sensibility, the Ang Lee one. That was for an album called Evermore. I have very specific film memories for things.
Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter. Her 2023–2024 Eras Tour was the highest-grossing tour of all time. She mentioned Sense and Sensibility while discussing films that inspired her albums and her short film, All Too Well (quoted in an article in Entertainment Weekly).
Ian McEwan: “profoundly influenced”
Perhaps this is the very essence of the condition of modernity—always to believe one has arrived in one’s time, at the summit of the modern. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey profoundly influenced my novel Atonement.
Ian McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam in 1998, and his award-winning novel Atonement was made into an Oscar-winning film. He wrote a handwritten homage to Austen for a 2017 auction to raise funds for the Royal Society of Literature (quoted in The Guardian).
Margaret Drabble: “All my novels are a dialogue with Jane Austen”
Margaret Drabble autographing one of her books at the 1993 JASNA AGM in Lake Louise.
All my novels are a dialogue with Jane Austen—and with various other people as well. But I’m always worrying about Jane Austen, answering her back and agreeing with her.
Dame Margaret Drabble is an English biographer, novelist, critic, and short story writer. She spoke of Austen’s influence on her work during the question period after she had read her story “The Dower House at Kellynch” at the 1993 JASNA AGM in Lake Louise, Alberta (quoted by Nora Foster Stovel in Persuasions 16). Drabble wrote the short story for her appearance at the JASNA AGM, and it was first published in Persuasions 15.
February
Adjoa Andoh, who is well known for playing Lady Danbury in the series Bridgerton, speaks of “the acerbic voice of the narrator” in the tribute she wrote for “Unexpectedly Austen.” Alongside Andoh’s tribute, this month’s installment features a quotation from professor and author John Mullan, who talks about discovering unexpected layers of complexity in Austen’s novels.
Adjoa Andoh: “the bite of the Austen voice”
I have yet to see a stage or film version of one of Austen’s novels that successfully communicates the wit, humour and acerbic voice of the narrator who is Austen. Without that voice, all the stories are reduced to something much less interesting. It’s the bite of the Austen voice that really fully realises the brilliant slice of the Austen intellect—her novels are scotch bonnet to the vanilla dramatisations commonly paraded as examples of her craft and genius. A mighty woman reduced, one might observe.
Adjoa Andoh is an actor, writer, director, producer, and honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In addition to performing on stage and in productions for the large and small screen, she has been a BBC radio actor for over thirty years and is an award-winning narrator of over 150 audiobooks, including Pride and Prejudice (2022).
John Mullan: “complex and endlessly re-readable”
I was a solemn male teenager. I foolishly thought, “Oh these novels are the same. They’re about girls finding a husband.” I was shown her genius by lots of now forgotten students who responded to her ingenuity with their own insights, and it dawned on me how complex and endlessly re-readable these apparently simple stories were.
John Mullan is Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at University College London. He is the author of What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved and a popular lecturer on Austen. His comments on what he learned from teaching Austen’s novels appeared in a BBC article by Heloise Wood on “What Jane Austen can teach us about resilience.”
January
Our January installment of “Unexpectedly Austen” features a tribute from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen, who responded to JASNA’s invitation by writing about Austen’s unexpected fame and lasting legacy, and a quotation from three-time NBA Champion Dwyane Wade, who explains why he believes the appeal of Pride and Prejudice transcends time and place.
Anna Quindlen: "the improbable inimitable immortal"
The first submission turned down flat, the second arriving in print without even her actual name on the title page. Who, in the early 19th century, could have predicted the 21st: read by millions, endless editions in every language, dozens of versions on film. And a truth universally acknowledged: that the woman born in a Hampshire rectory who lived a quiet life at home was one of the greatest writers of fiction in the English language. Six novels, written during and about the British regency, and yet sold constantly all over the world today because they were about then, and they are about now, about men, money and marriage, about self-doubt, self-discovery, and self-knowledge. Jane Austen is, and will always be, the improbable inimitable immortal.
Anna Quindlen is the author of ten novels and the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times columns. Jane Austen is her home girl.
Dwyane Wade: “letting love take over”
I’ve read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times. It’s one of my favorite books, which usually surprises people. I guess they wonder how a love story from Regency England could be relevant to a 21st century basketball player from the Southside of Chicago. Class struggle, overcoming stereotypes and humble beginnings, getting out of your own way and letting love take over: these are things I can relate to, definitely.
Dwyane Wade chose Pride and Prejudice as his favorite Penguin Classic for the 60th Anniversary of Penguin Classics and NBA Cares “Read to Achieve” Literacy Initiative. Wade is a three-time NBA Champion, Olympic gold medalist, and thirteen-time NBA All-Star.
The Editors
Liz Philosophos Cooper is a JASNA Past President and Chair of the 250th Anniversary Celebration Committee. Sarah Emsley is the author of Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues and editor of Jane Austen and the North Atlantic.
