Hold on to your bonnets

Hold on to your bonnets Whether comic books and operas or granny knickers and counting orgasms, the legacy of Jane Austen, who would have been 250 this year, may have shocked the author, finds Annunciata Elwes

- Annunciata Elwes

MY plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose,' advises Amber. 'Well, there goes your social life,' quips Dionne. Is this the sort of witticism that Jane Austen would have written had she been born, say, 50 years ago instead of 250? The 1995 film Clueless, based on Austen's Emma (1815) and set in a Beverly Hills high school, became a cult classic, grossing $88 million ($67.8 million)-more than twice as much as the traditional film adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow of 1996.

Austen's novels were published anonymously and read by a few thousand (including the Prince Regent), but she was almost unknown upon her death in 1817 and many of her books went out of print. It wasn't until a biography written by her nephew came out in 1870 that her work took off, later achieving critical acclaim. In 1924, Rudyard Kipling's short story The Janeites described a group of Austen-obsessed soldiers in the trenches and, in the 1940s, a verger at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, puzzled by tourists visiting her gravestone, asked: 'Was there anything particular about that lady?" Now, we can't escape Austenmania.

Her work has inspired reams of fan fiction-prequels, sequels and tales of bedroom antics-the first of these appeared more than 100 years ago and the movement hasn't stopped growing. Pride and Prejudice (1813) has sold more than 20 million copies around the world and inspired versions involving pugs and guinea pigs, a Marvel comic and a Swedish opera; the spin-off books and pastiches are seemingly infinite.

'Have some more wine and tell me more about practising French kissing with other girls'