The LA Review of Books has devoted several essays this week celebrating the work of Jane Austen.

Audrey Bilger and Susan Greenfield celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

“Today, Pride and Prejudice is more than a mere book. Elizabeth and Darcy have gone viral in multimodal forms of representation; their story has been adapted and retold in virtually every media — from children’s books, to cartoons, to erotica and musicals to movies, to YouTube videos.”

Read more: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1348

Devoney Looser explores the cult of celebrity surrounding Jane Austen and her place in the popular imagination:

“Although the literati may understandably be appalled by the recent proliferation of action figures, devotional verse, and plastic bandages, even the purists among us can’t deny that Austen’s inhabiting these forms must alter how we read her fiction.”

Read more: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1349

Ted Scheinman gets to know the real Jane Austen with the new book, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne:

“Into the widening gyre of Austen DNA comes Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. Released — almost to the hour — on the bicentennial of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, this material history negotiates the burden of biographers past by dealing with, well, things past. Each chapter is fronted with the image of an object that either belonged to the Austens or otherwise illuminates something about the family and the age.”