Jane Actually

course, that not every interaction would be as enjoyable. She did not give away much of herself; they mostly talked about his relationship with Karen. She wondered at the advisability of his forming an attachment with her, especially since he had met her online when he was seventeen, at the very dawn of the AfterNet, and Karen purported to be thirty-five years old when she died in 1960.
    The maths was not that different from those of Knightley and Emma, of course, and apparently Karen had resided in the Kirkendorf home unbeknownst to Bob’s parents.
    Jane had felt tempted to step into the role of maiden aunt and advise him of the dangers of such a relationship, but she had refrained, although she exchanged email addresses with him and might offer her advice in the future.
    Finally she left the pizzeria, realizing that she was now late for her training with Mary and would have to hurry. Her time, however, had been well spent. Her conversation with her new friend made her realize that more than ever she felt very much a part of the twenty-first century and was not content to sit back while her life was the plaything of every scholar and voyeur with a publishing contract.
    1 Henry Austen provided his sister with the money to publish
Sense and Sensibility
. They adjusted type size and line leading to reduce the number of printed pages, just like the publisher of this book chose 10.5 point type with 2.1 points of leading.

An open letter
Jane responds online
    Dear friends,
    Oh that salutation will not do at all, for I wish to address all my friends, critics, detractors, admirers, apologists and scholars of my works and life. I want you to know I appreciate that my “reappearance” has come as a surprise, if not a shock, to many.
    During my time away, many have stepped in to keep my voice alive, so much so that almost two hundred years later, my name and my novels have greater currency now than during my corporeal existence. I am continually amazed that in this day of reality television, 24-hour news and science fiction blockbuster movies, there is still a desire to read of “three or four families in a country village.” 1
    But of course my “little bits of ivory” 2 —oh how I regret how twee 3 that now sounds—have been enlarged to include zombies and vampires and my characters have even travelled through time and space.
    And organizations such as the societies in my homeland and in North America have done much to make my stories more accessible, both by promoting my work and by providing the context of the world in which I lived and wrote. I am sometimes surprised by learning how clever I was, but I must protest that my understanding of the politics and economics of Regency England was rudimentary at best. I do, however, admit I had a subtext in my choice of characters, names, locations and behaviours that I am glad is still appreciated.
    Movies and television have also done much to keep Elizabeth and Darcy and Emma and even poor Fanny relevant to the era in which they were created, often adding elements that I had never intended (or in some cases would never have approved of) and yet I understand the considerations of producers and directors and the arithmetic of box office and television ratings.
    Scholars have also found my life and times of great interest, although why is a mystery. Perhaps by editing and withholding many of my letters, my sister Cassandra unknowingly contributed to making it a mystery and scholars find mysteries very tempting. That may explain efforts to bend my temperament and sympathies this way and that and often back and forth as theories are advanced to match current sensibilities, each generation understandably at odds with the interpretations of the previous.
    Recently I’ve become aware that some scholars and authors are worried that “the real Jane Austen” might object to these speculations, biographies, pastiches, parodies, reboots and continuations, but despite my identity being certified by the AfterNet, I assure you I am no longer “the real Jane Austen”—or rather I am not that little travelled Regency author, unnamed during her lifetime who preferred the simple life of Hampshire. As I write this, I am in New York City in America and these words will appear on my blog and you will read them on your computer or your smartphone. I am about to embark on a book tour of the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. So I cannot in all good conscience pretend that I