In a world of BookTok, meet the young women obsessed with Jane Austen
“Jane Austen is a lifestyle!” a young woman wearing a Pemberley slogan jumper tells me over Zoom, her passion palpable through the screen. “Not only can you read the novels, but I met my best friends in The Jane Austen Society. I travel with them to Bath, we go to balls, and do regency dancing.” Meet Tara, she’s a 26-year-old Canadian expat living in the UK. She’s an actor, singer and teaches English Literature… And if you couldn't tell, a massive Jane Austen fan - or Janeite, to use the official fan moniker.
2025 marks 250 years since Jane Austen, the English writer known for her celebrated six novels, was born. Her first book, Sense and Sensibility, was published in 1811, and in the years since, she’s gone from well known writer to fully-fledged cultural icon, and is one of the most respected figures in British literary history. There’s literal bank notes with her face emblazoned on.
But despite two and a half centuries of time passing by, the Austen hype shows no sign of slowing down, particularly in this anniversary year. Last night, the BBC aired their much-anticipated drama Miss Austen, based on the life of Jane’s older sister Cassandra, while Bloom Stories recently released an “erotic” version of Pride and Prejudice. Then there’s the new immersive show Plied & Prejudice launching in London, and in March, another Miss Austen Investigates novel (a series which stars Jane as detective) will be hitting the shelves. Basically, it’s Austen mania - in part thanks to the new generation of women who are waving their fans for the author.
Fan edits of Austen adaptations, particularly those of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie, are everywhere on TikTok, with Mr Darcy’s hand flex having its own viral moment in 2020. Fable, a book app favoured by Gen-Z, is filled with Jane Austen book clubs, and IRL, the Meetup app has many events listed for people who want to convene and discuss her work. So much time has passed, and yet, women are not only reading the books, but writing plays about them, creating Substacks dedicated to key themes, and - in the case of 21-year-old politics student Jess - asking Chat GPT to put Jane Austen novels into today’s world.
But despite the modern adaptations, what many young Austen devotees love most about her work is strictly the 19th century. “There are so many different characters, and it's really interesting, because within that time period, there was a specific code on how to be ‘feminine’,” Jess explains. “And so you would think the characters would be carbon copies of one another. But it's interesting how she portrays someone like Emma, who gets in everyone's business, compared to Anne from Persuasion, who is much more quiet. They're strong female characters, but not in the sense you see in modern literature, with someone like Katniss Everdeen [from The Hunger Games]. I like Katniss’ character, but [she’s] hard to relate to. I'm never going to fight the president of a dystopia, whereas with Jane Austen, the traits [shown in the characters] are universal, but [you] see them in a different time period.”
The strength of Austen’s female characters is a popular reason many give for their love of the author, with 27-year-old non-profit worker Angel adding: “Most of her books include at least one character arc about a strong woman who learns something and gets better in some way. I think it's something that isn't as present in modern literature as I would like for it to be.”
Austen’s prose and satire are also highly lauded by women today. “She managed to render the inner life of her characters in a way that was stylistically quite innovative,” 38-year-old playwright Rose agrees. “English professors call it free indirect discourse.” It’s a style Austen, along with Goethe, pioneered, and has since been used by writers such as Harper Lee, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
Then of course, there’s the romance of it all. Even if you’ve never read an Austen novel, you’re likely to know the captivating story of Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, the OG enemies to lovers tale. And Austen’s followers gravitate towards the subtlety found within her romance plots, something that is arguably missing from the BookTok romcom genre of today.
“I think she writes some of the greatest love stories ever,” gushes Tara, with Angel agreeing: “I was reading a more modern romance novel [by a famous BookTok author] and I was thinking, ‘Oh God, I really don't like this style.’ I was trying to put my finger on it, and it was just so childish. Austen’s style is a lot more elegant and classic.”
The Janeities are also quick to point out the ultimate pull of her novels is the way female friendship and connection is explored. Which makes sense, given many women, including all those that I spoke to, were introduced to Austen at a young age by another woman in their lives. For Tara and Angel, it was the movies their mum played them, while Jess first read Austen in a girls’ only book group at school. Rose was given a copy of Pride and Prejudice by her female cousins. As Angel puts it, “That focus on female friendships and how they change and evolve, and how important they are, is something that we don't always get in modern fiction.”
It’s also worth noting how this sense of sisterhood fostered in Austen’s pages translates into the real lives of Austen fans. Jess set up the London Classics Book Club, where they meet monthly to discuss different classic authors, as a way to build a community - something she felt was missing in her life, but extremely pertinent in Austen’s world. “You can [just] read Jane Austen, but having that community feel is really good. We have such a large society, and especially living in cities, you don’t know everyone in the same way,” she explains. “So many young people feel atomized, and that's why they cling to Jane Austen, because of that sense of [kinship.]”
As well as attending book clubs and lectures, fans also go to Jane Austen-style balls, with Tara favouring a group called Mrs Bennet’s Ballroom, which hosts dances around the country, including in Bath, where Austen spent a lot of her life. She buys her costumes on Etsy and describes going to the events a couple of times a year as one of her “main hobbies”. Rose, meanwhile, is the co-regional coordinator for the New York City Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She regularly attends the Jane Austen summer programme at the University of North Carolina, which involves lectures, events and a ball, adding, “It's famously hard to make friends as an adult. But that hasn't been my experience, and that's largely because Jane Austen has provided this.”
It’s hard to know exactly what Austen would make of her success 250 years on. But given the emphasis on strong female characters and their flourishing friendships within her novels, I have no doubt she’d be happy to know she’s created a community of women finding comfort and joy with each other, thanks to the pages of her work.
Miss Austen is available to watch on BBC One and iPlayer
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