The Jane Austen Society of North America, the world’s largest organization devoted to the author, says it has seen a recent influx of younger fans, though most of its members — 5,000 to date — skew older.
“We’re growing all the time because Jane Austen is timeless,” said Mary Mintz, the group’s president. “We have members from Japan, India. They come from every continent except Antarctica.”
The Bridgerton effect
Many festival-goers will be making a pilgrimage to Steventon, the small village in rural Hampshire, southern England, where Austen was born in 1775.
The author lived in Bath, a fashionable spa town in the 18th and 19th centuries, for five years. Two of her novels, “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey,” feature scenes set in the World Heritage city.
Bath is also the filming location for parts of “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s wildly popular modern take on period drama based loosely on the Regency period, the decade when the future King George IV stood in as prince regent because his father was deemed unfit to rule due to mental illness.
Thanks to the show, Austen and Regency style — think romantic flowing gowns, elegant ballrooms and high society soirees — have become trendy for a new generation.
“I think Jane Austen is on the rise,” Potts said. “She’s definitely become more popular since ‘Bridgerton’.”
Stepping back in time together
In a church hall in Winchester, a few streets away from where Austen was buried, the Hampshire Regency Dancers gather weekly to practice for the many performances they’re staging this year in honor of the author.
The group selects dances that appear in screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, and members go to painstaking detail to ensure their costumes, down to the buttons and stitching, are authentic looking.
“We go to a lot of trouble to get things as close to the original as possible,” said Chris Oswald, a retired lawyer who now chairs the group. “For me it’s about getting a better understanding of what life was like then, and in the process of doing that getting a better understanding of Jane Austen herself.”
Oswald is passionate about his group’s showcases in Hampshire, or what he jokingly calls “Jane Austen land.”
“People get quite touched because they are walking where Jane Austen actually walked. They dance in a room that Jane Austen danced in,” he said. “For people who are very into Jane Austen, that’s extremely special.”
Many “Janeites” say they get huge enjoyment in making Austen’s words and imageries come to life in a community of like-minded people.
Lisa Timbs, a pianist who researches the music in Austen’s life and performs it on an antique pianoforte, puts it succinctly: She and her Regency friends are “stepping back in time together.”
“I think it’s an escape for a lot of people,” Timbs added. “Perhaps it’s to escape the speed, noise and