Jane Actually

too well. Everyone over here loves Jane. They’re all wearing these buttons.”
    “It’s the same here. Even my students wear them.”
    “Have you ever thought … well, we might be very unpopular.”
    “I’m not doing this to be popular, Court.”
    “Well, maybe you’re not, but … damn, I can’t even remember why I’m doing this. I thought we had a common enemy …”
    “If we expose an impostor, people will thank us, Court. You’re not thinking of withholding this information, are you?”
    “No, of course not. The journal and the letter will go public one way or another. Mrs Westerby clearly needs the money. I just don’t know if releasing it at the AGM is the best way to go. I don’t particularly want to be attacked by pitchfork-wielding Janeites.”
    Alice bleakly laughed at this thought, the image of bonnet clad women carrying pitchforks and torches. It was the first time she’d found anything funny that day.
    “Point taken, Court. It has been spiralling out of control, and I’m afraid I’m the one who’s been the cause of a lot of it. But perhaps we can turn this to our advantage. They want us to meet with this fake Austen before I give my talk, and I think we’ll take them up on that offer. Then we can accuse her in front of witnesses. We’ll record the whole thing on video.”
    1 Elisabeth Lenckos is a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Graham School and a Chawton House Library Research Fellow

The Great State of Texas
Contemplations at 30,000 feet
    “W e’ve just entered the Lone Star State, ladies and gentlemen,” the voice of the pilot said over the cabin speakers. Mary looked up from her copy of
Emma
, her attention drawn to the proclamation.
    “He always does that,” the male flight attendant told her, as he stopped to pick up the empty coffee cup on Mary’s seat back tray. “He’s an Aggie. 1 At least he doesn’t say ‘Yee haw!’ anymore.”
    Mary smiled at the flight attendant and went back to the book, disappointed that she was still reading a Miss Bates paragraph. She’d now read the other five novels, seen movie and television adaptations of them all and of course knew
Sanditon
like she’d written it herself. She’d seen the Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale 2 adaptations of
Emma
and thought them delightful. But she had yet to actually finish reading
Emma
.
    She’d heard that everyone had an Austen novel they least cared for, usually
Mansfield Park
. But for Mary,
Emma
was the dud that just sat there daring her to finish it. Reading it was like the experience she had when a child and her mother forced her to finish the meatloaf she’d made, chock-a-block with onions and green peppers. She shared her distaste for onions and green peppers with her father and her mother usually kept those vegetables to a minimum, but her father was out of town on a business trip and her mother decided to make meatloaf the way she liked it. Mary sat at the table for three hours, forced to finish the cold meatloaf with appropriate adolescent histrionics.
    She never understood why her mother destroyed something perfectly good—hamburger slathered with ketchup—with something so fundamentally awful.
    Miss Bates was like onions and green peppers. Mary detested the woman. She reminded Mary of Mrs Henley, a neighbour, who would corral Mary’s mother on the porch for long conversations. They’d be on their way to the store and Mrs Henley would want to tell them stories about her son who was in a private school. She told them about his grades and his athletic activities until Mary would start tugging at her mother’s hand, eager to get away. But her mother would nod agreeably and ask questions that would prolong the agony.
    After they finally escaped, Mary would ask her mother why she stayed to listen to Mrs Henley, and her mother would say it never hurts to be polite.
    She contemplated just skipping the entire page-long paragraph but she sighed and read it anyway, not with any great attention admittedly. She decided her mother was right. It never hurts to be polite, even if you do force your daughter to eat onions and green peppers.
    Mary looked to the empty seat beside her, hoping Jane hadn’t noticed the sigh and deduced the cause. She didn’t fear Jane’s disapprobation. She just didn’t want to be drawn into another long discussion about the book and why she didn’t like it.
    But Jane said nothing and Mary assumed she was either trying to write or in a chat with