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
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.
