Strictly Jane Austen Episode 5: America's Love Affair with Jane Austen

Episode 5 of our six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored by Strictly Jane Austen. It's one of the strangest love affairs in literary history. Here is a country founded on tearing up the rule book of aristocracy and inherited rank — a nation that fought a war to be free of all of it. And it falls utterly and permanently for a clergyman's daughter from Hampshire who wrote six novels about the English gentry. Mark Twain loathed her so passionately he said he wanted to dig her up, and lost comprehensively to his own countrymen. Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm — author of Fan Phenomena: Jane Austen and There's Something About Darcy, and creative director of Strictly Jane Austen — explains what draws people across an ocean to walk in Austen's footsteps. It started with a tote bag reading "I ♥ Darcy," and the realization that no other character in English literature could possibly warrant one. Along the way: why everybody calls her Jane and nobody calls Dickens Charlie; her provocative argument that Americans recognized Austen before the English did; why male academics were still dismissing her as a romance writer within living memory; what makes Darcy structurally different from Rochester and Heathcliff — he actually changes, rather than needing to be set on fire first; and why Bath, a city Austen never much liked, became the heart of the pilgrimage. 🎀 Sponsored by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company, where today's guest is creative director. 👉 https://strictlyjaneausten.com 00:46 Introduction & Our Sponsor 01:44 AMERICA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH JANE AUSTEN 03:07 HOW SHE CAME TO THIS 05:13 THE I-HEART-DARCY TOTE BAG 07:36 EVERYBODY CALLS HER JANE 08:10 She Is in the Room — The Free Indirect Style 10:41 "WE RECREATE AUSTEN FOR OUR TIME" 12:53 Clueless Channeling Emma 13:01 THE PARADOX AT THE HEART OF THIS EPISODE 14:45 "I AM A GENTLEMAN'S DAUGHTER" 18:22 MARK TWAIN 21:14 WHEN DID AMERICA FALL FOR HER? 21:58 "JANE WHO?" — Flowers on the Grave at Winchester 23:41 "Still Being Disparaged by Male Academics" 26:23 JASNA, AND AMERICAN FANDOM 30:19 THE LOVELY SIDE OF THE INTERNET 30:57 Firth or Macfadyen — As Heated as It Gets 33:43 THE 1995 ADAPTATION 37:33 WHAT IS MR. DARCY, EXACTLY? 39:33 DARCY CHANGES — AND MOSTLY OFFSTAGE 40:19 "The Lightning in a Bottle of Pride and Prejudice" 43:30 LITERARY TOURISM — Why Go There at All? 46:57 SHE DIDN'T LIKE BATH — So Why Is It the Heart of It? 50:56 STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN 56:18 Where Her Aunt Was Arrested for Shoplifting ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎀 OUR SPONSOR — STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Step into Jane Austen's Bath with the company where today's guest is creative director. Guided walks, Regency costume hire, afternoon tea, Bridgerton and Gothic tours, residencies, gift vouchers. 🎩 Tours: https://strictlyjaneausten.com/privat... 👗 Period Dress & Afternoon Tea: https://strictlyjaneausten.com/period... 🎁 Gift Vouchers: https://strictlyjaneausten.com/produc... 👉 https://strictlyjaneausten.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 GABRIELLE'S BOOKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ There's Something About Darcy: https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Somethi... Fan Phenomena: Jane Austen, plus every link from this episode, in the show notes. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ JOIN THE FRIENDS OF ANGLOTOPIA CLUB ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Get early access to every episode, exclusive content, and connect with fellow Britain enthusiasts. 👉 https://anglotopia.memberful.com/join ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... 💚 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6FpdWW4... 🌐 Podcast Website: https://podcast.anglotopia.net/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌍 ANGLOTOPIA & LONDONTOPIA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🇬🇧 Anglotopia — World's Largest Anglophile Website Since 2007: https://anglotopia.net 🇬🇧 Londontopia — The World's #1 London Website: https://londontopia.net 📧 Free Weekly Newsletter: https://anglotopia.net/newsletter 🛍️ Anglotopia Store: https://store.anglotopia.net ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW US ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Instagram:   / anglotopia   Facebook:   / anglotopia   YouTube:    / @anglotopia   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ DISCLOSURE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This episode is sponsored by Strictly Jane Austen. Some links above are affiliate links, including Amazon Associates links. We may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you — thank you for supporting Anglotopia and Londontopia!