January 2025 marks the 250th birth anniversary of novelist Jane Austen, and fans — known as "Jane-ites" — are celebrating.

The daughter of a clergyman, Austen anonymously published four novels in her lifetime with modest success, but she wrote seven in total and left another two unfinished when she died at the age of 41.

In Jane Austen’s own century that actually would have been considered pretty abhorrent.” Significantly, Austen’s books have endless sly wit and cynicism, also unusual for her time.

Can reading Jane Austen give us ... We assume that Austen must be suffering from the same delusions. Recent film and fictional adaptations of her novels haven’t helped: “the ghosts of ...