Why Jane Austen remains relevant in 2025 and beyond

It is a truth universally acknowledged that while 2025 has given us more than our fair share of horrors, for Janeites — devotees of Jane Austen — it has yielded a yearlong opportunity to celebrate the great author’s 250th birthday.

At one such event on a frosty night in New York City, 150 or so self-proclaimed Austen nerds assembled in the rare book room of the iconic Strand Bookstore to sip Pemberley tea and nibble on scones slathered with strawberry jam while exchanging tidbits about their literary idol. Some of those in attendance, including Strand staff, cosplayed as Regency-era regalia–women in empire-waist gowns, with events director Walker Iverson dreamy in a Mr. Darcy-inspired puffy shirt he’d found on Amazon being sold as part of a pirate costume. Novelists Jennifer Egan, Adelle Waldman and Brandon Taylor then took the stage to collectively ponder Austen’s enduring legacy and duke it out over which of her novels — “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park,” “Emma,” “Northanger Abbey” or “Persuasion” — should be everyone’s hands-down favorite. Surprisingly, none of the three claimed Austen’s best-known novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” while dark horse candidate “Mansfield Park” — Austen’s far less sparkly, even somber third novel — appeared to win the day. Following their conversation, audience members participated in a lively game of Jane Austen trivia, during which it became clear that all in the room had done their homework. Sample question: In “Northanger Abbey,” whom does Isabella Thorpe have an affair with? A) Frederick Tilney; B) Charles Bingley; or C) Silas Marner? (Read to the end for the answer.)

Egan, Waldman and Taylor, along with Sandra Cisneros, Nicola Yoon and Lauren Groff, have each been commissioned by publisher Vintage to write new introductions to the six titles that have been refreshed and reissued. The sold-out gathering at the Strand was one of six tea parties being thrown throughout the country by the publisher to commemorate Austen’s semiquincentennial. Another well-attended get-together was held earlier this month at Culver City’s the Ripped Bodice bookstore, where sugar cookies specially prepared by local baker Nicolette Buenrostro, of Dottie’s House of Sweets, depicted various Austen book covers. And the tea flowed.

Portrait of Jane Austen. Engraving, 1870.

(Getty Images / Universal Images)

The Strand assemblage, a cozy affair held amid shelves of leather-bound first editions in a room that frequently hosts weddings, drew people of all ages, mostly of the female variety. Among the youngest in the crowd was a fifth-grader named Mathilda who recently read “Emma” and has since become its author’s ardent fan. On TikTok, #JaneAusten has amassed over 200 million views, many of them Gen Z and younger, but when asked if that was where Mathilda discovered Austen, she appeared mildly offended by the association and proffered a withering “no.” “I’m not on social media,” she politely announced. After reading Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” she explained, she yearned for more “old-fashioned” stories centering girls and women. There is a dearth of such tales in contemporary literature, in her opinion, whose characters tend to favor boys and men. On a search for another book by a 19th century woman author, a copy of “Emma” on display at a local bookstore caught her eye, and she picked it up. A new Janeite was born.

(S&S/Marysue Rucci Books)

Jane Austen — whom many consider the creator of the modern novel — was born Dec. 16, 1775 in Steventon, England, the seventh of eight children. Her father was the rector of two parishes and ran a small boys’ school to supplement the family’s meager income. Austen’s formal education ended at age 11, but the family culture was “distinctly literary,” according to Rebecca Romney, author of “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend.” Romney writes that the Austens “were a genteel family — upper-class but not titled.” The family often read and reread books aloud together, among them Frances Burney’s “Evelina,” whose work was to have an enormous influence on Austen’s own writing, as would such unsung literary predecessors as Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth and others whose work has largely disappeared from modern shelves and was historically dismissed by critics.

Austen couldn’t afford to buy many books herself, but she had access to local “circulating libraries” and belonged to a local book club whose members split the cost of a book and shared it among themselves. The Austen family also enjoyed theater, and staged and even wrote many plays together at home. In fact, according to Romney, most of the family wrote, whether poetry, sermons, plays, or fiction.

Austen began writing as a child, and her “juvenilia,” reports Romney, “show a delight in parody,” a characteristic that would inform her later work. During her lifetime — Austen died at age 41 — she published four of her novels, all anonymously, as social conventions of the time discouraged women of a certain class from earning money through trade or in any way seeking notoriety. She had great confidence in her own literary voice, though. Romney recounts that, for example, when someone recommended she write a historical novel, she responded, “No, I must keep to my own style and go in my own way.” After her death, her brother Henry saw to it that her two remaining novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published under her name, and an accompanying biographical note explicitly named her as author of all six works of fiction that had previously been credited: “By a Lady.”

Author Rebecca Romney

(Donnamaria R. Jones)

More than 200 years later, not only do Austen’s novels still resonate, they are an industry unto themselves, inspiring hundreds of adaptations across genres, including the 2025 PBS series “Miss Austen,” which centers on Jane’s sister and confidante, Cassandra, and a new film version of “Sense and Sensibility,” starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne, set for release in September 2026. There have even been Austen-inspired online role-playing games such as the now-defunct “Ever, Jane,” as well as a 2D platformer game in which Austen uses a quill to fight off villains based on characters from her various novels. And for horror-loving Austen fans, there’s always “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” a 2009 mash-up novel by Seth Grahame-Smith featuring a fictional zombie plague set in the Regency era.

What accounts for Jane Austen’s continuing relevance? Some attribute it to Austen’s role in ushering in the rom-com, and perfecting the “marriage plot” in her courtship novels. She is a brilliant wordsmith, who had a transformative effect in literature by shifting the focus inward using indirect discourse to combine a character’s inner thoughts with the narrator’s voice. The psychological complexity she achieved paved the way for such future writers as Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and James Joyce.

Despite being of the 18th century, Austen’s heroines are singular for how they grapple with who they are, and with a growing awareness of how they feel, as opposed to what others are telling them to feel — which resonates greatly with contemporary readers. Romney explains it this way: “Austen novels encourage reading and rereading, as well as contemplation. She makes ordinary women feel extraordinary, that we are the main characters of our own story. She formalizes that and gives us a reason to believe it.”

As 2025 closes out, there is at least one prediction that can be safely made: Our romance with Jane Austen shows no signs of waning.

(Answer: Frederick Tilney)

Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.