How Shall We Ever Recollect Half the Dishes for Grandmamma?

How Shall We Ever Recollect Half the Dishes for Grandmamma?1 Alistair M. Duckworth Ahundred years ago, HenryJames deplored how "the body ofpublishers, editors, illustrators, producers of the pleasant twaddle of magazines ... found their 'dear,' our dear, everybody's dear, Jane so infinitely to their material purpose."2 Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chosel In addition to print, other media such as film, radio, television, and the Internet provide an infinity of new opportunities for the exploitation of England's favourite author. Suzanne R. Pucci andJames Thompson, inJaneAusten and Co., count nineteen film and television adaptations ofAusten's work in recentyears and more than one hundred continuations, rewritings, and sequels of the novels. Crossmarketing , among many other tie-ins, produces "Cluelessand PrideandPrejudice dolls, music to readAusten by, and organized tours ofJaneAusten's England."3 One may divide those who welcome "Austenmania" from those who deplore it on ideological grounds. The ever-expandingJane Austen Societies in North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom are part of the phenomenon. The Annual General Meeting of theJane Austen Society of North America was held for the first time in 2003 "in that corner ofEngland 1 Jane Austen, Emma, vol. 3, chap. 2(1816; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 330. 2 HenryJames, "The Lesson of Balzac" (1905),Jane Austen: Tlie Critical Heritage: Volume 2, 1870-1940, ed. B.C. Southam (NewYork: Roudedge, 1987), p. 230. 3 Jane Austen and Co.: Remaking tlte Past in Contemporary Culture, ed. Suzanne R. Pucci and James Thompson (Albany: State University ofNewYork Press, 2003), p. 1. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 3,April 2004 472 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION where our favorite author lived and where her legend has been preserved with such affecüon and respect."4JASNA Neius invited "literary pilgrims" to avail themselves of "multiple-day tours" to settings actually visited byJane Austen, or "one-day tours" to places she knew, or "brief tours" providing "opportunities for Austenian experiences"; the tour company's website and postal address were provided. For Mike Crang, in his "Placing Jane Austen, Displacing England," Austenmania is part ofa "heritage industry" that uses literary tourism to map Austen's texts onto a mythical landscape that upholds "a reactionary and deeply conservative vision ofEnglishness."5John Wiltshire is equallysensitive to critical appropriations ofAusten's novels in the service of "English" values in a multicultural world (see his RecreatingJaneAusten and my review of that book).6Wiltshire argues thatAusten's "Englishness," with its connotations of class and gender as well as nation, antagonizes readers with different ethnic, class, and gender identities and inspires them to "recreate" different meanings in her novels. The batde between anglocentric readings and oppositional readings will be replayed in some of the works reviewed below; but as I have argued in a recent review of Deidre Lynch's Janeites (2000), Janeites can no longer be dismissed as genteel amateurs addicted to the wearing of waistcoats and pelisses and devoted to antiquarian researches and the nostalgic recreation of a Regency England that never was.7 For years now, North American Janeites have produced scholarly articles in the Societyjournal, Persuasions, even as academics such as Juliet McMaster have donned Janeite guise to provide delightful illustrations to editions ofsuch minor works by Austen as Frederick ùfElfrida andJack Ù?Alice.9 The s&meJASNA News that advertised the tours for literary pilgrims announced a slate of speakers for this year's conference that included Brian Southam, Claire Tomalin, andJanet Todd: respectively the heir ofR.W. Chapman in Austenian editing and scholarship, the best Austen biographer, and the General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge edition ofJane Austen's Works. 4 Gene C. Gill, "Jane Austen's Hampshire Awaits,"JASNA News 19:1 (Spring 2003), 1. 5 Mike Crang, "Placingjane Austen, Displacing England: Touring between Book, History, and Nation,"JaneAusten and Co., pp. 1 1 1-30, see p. 1 12. 6 John Wiltshire, RecrealingjaneAusten (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Alistair M. Duckworth, review ofJohn Wiltshire, RecereatirigJaneAusten, in Eiglileenth-CenturyFiction 15:2 (2003), 320-23. 7 Duckworth, review ofJaneites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees, ed. Deidre Lynch, NineteenthCentury Literature 56:2 (2001), 271-76; Janeites: Austen's Discipks and Devotees, ed. Lynch (Princeton: Princeton University Press...