Abstract
This chapter explores the place of Jane Austen and her work on Wattpad, an online literary community which launched from Canada in 2006. From paranormal and fan fiction, to werewolf, historical, romance, ‘chick lit’ and even a substream of Mormon faith-inflected stories, Austen-related work abounds in ‘Wattpadland’. This chapter offers close readings of a number of Austen-themed fictional works published there, such as a Pride and Prejudice update novel by a commercially published LDS [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] author, and amateur fan fiction involving werewolves, time travel and even the members of the boy band, One Direction.
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Notes
Letter to Anna Austen, 9–18 September 1814, Deirdre Le Faye (ed), The Letters of Jane Austen, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 275
Jane Austen, Persuasion, London: Penguin, 1985, 69.
For this ‘paradox’, see Suzanne R. Pucci, ‘The Return Home’, in Suzanne R. Pucci and James Thompson (eds), Jane Austen and Co: Remaking the Past in Contemporary Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press, c. 2003, 133–55.
Marji McClure, ‘Wattpad Powers Mobile User-Generated Content’, Information Today 26:6, June 2009, 18
Paula Byrne, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, London: Harper Press, 2013.
Rebecca W. Black, Adolescent and Online Fan Fiction, New York: Peter Lang, 2008, xiv.
Graham Allen, Intertextuality, Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013, 1.
Hale followed Austenland (London: Bloomsbury, 2007)
Juliette Wells, ‘Jane Austen in Mollywood: Mainstreaming Mormonism in Andrew Black’s Pride and Prejudice’, in Mark T. Decker and Michael Austin (eds), Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, Stage, & Screen, Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010, 164.
Juliette Wells, Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination, London: Continuum, 2012, 191.
Amongst many references to this influence, which are repeatedly made by Meyer and others, see Shirley Kinney and Wallis Kinney, ‘The Jane Austen — Twilight Zone’, The Jane Austen Society of North America website, http://www.jasna.org/film/twilight.html [accessed 15 April 2013]. HarperCollins capitalised on this relationship in 2009 when it reprinted Pride and Prejudice and other canonical texts ‘with covers that echo those of the Twilight books and carry an endorsement from “Bella & Edward”.’ [Kristina Deffenbacher and Mikayla Zagoria-Moffet, ‘Textual Vampirism in the Twilight Saga: Drawing Feminist Life from Jane Eyre and Teen Fantasy Fiction’, in Giselle Liza Anatol (ed), Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on a Pop Culture Phenomenon, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 31
Marina Cano-Lopez goes so far as to argue that vampire Austen also reads as a metaphor for ‘the Austen phenomenon: these creatures are dead, but still living and refusing to die.’ [Marina Cano-Lopez, ‘In Flesh and Blood: Jane Austen as a Postmodern Fictional Character’, in Laurence Raw and Robert G. Dryden (eds), Global Jane Austen: Pleasure, Passion, and Possessiveness in the Jane Austen Community, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 153
Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 77.
Kathryn Sutherland, ‘Jane Austen on Screen’, in Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 216.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, London: Penguin, 2003, 134.
Katrina Busse, ‘Geek Hierarchies, Boundary Policing, and the Gendering of the Good Fan’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10: 1, May 2013, 73–91.
Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip, London: John Murray, 2007 [2006], 196.
Beverly Taylor, ‘Discovering New Pasts: Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pip’, Victorian Studies 52:1, 2009, 95.
Alexandra Potter, Me and Mr. Darcy, New York: Ballantine, 2007.
Jon Spence, Becoming Jane Austen: A Life, London and NY: Hambledon and London, 2003.
Fond irreverence with the writing figure is an established feature of published spin-off also, including Michael Thomas Ford’s series, Jane Bites Back [New York: Ballantine, 2010]
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© 2014 Kylie Mirmohamadi
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Mirmohamadi, K. (2014). Jane Austen’s Adventures in Wattpadland. In: The Digital Afterlives of Jane Austen: Janeites at the Keyboard. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401335_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401335_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48636-6
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