A review by pearl35
Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures by Claudia L. Johnson

3.0

Johnson examines the afterlife of Jane's influence--the campaign to make her gravesite in Winchester Cathedral a tourist destination (and the stained glass window no one really likes), the assembling of relics and the family's wave of memoirs in the 19th century and the creation of the Jane Austen House Museum in 1947. The two really interesting chapters, though, are on Jane Austen in WWI (where her works were read widely among the upper class officers, and reflected in the Kipling story "The Janeites," which I had never encountered before and had to seek out) and in WWII (attracting much wider following because of cheap paperbacks distributed to troops, many of whom loved the male characters and the vision of England standing alone against Napoleon, as well as the Americans who liked the recent movie with Laurence Olivier). Just as a note, some mindful book designer added end papers textured like ostrich skin.