‘Our Jane’: N.S. Austen fans celebrate her 250th birthday, and her Halifax connection

It’s a hot August afternoon in Halifax’s Public Gardens. But it’s a bit hard to tell whether it’s 2025 or 1775 based on the crowd at hand.

Women in Regency-style gowns stroll past, and there’s at least one gentleman wearing a waist coat and breeches. All of them are here for a summer celebration of their favourite writer: Jane Austen, one of the most enduring authors in the English language.

“She showed how women had a lot of strength, and could make a difference in society,” said Mary Dempster. 

“And I just love her eloquence, too. The way she wrote was so beautiful.”

That opinion is a popular one, and not just at this Halifax event co-hosted by the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). There have been global celebrations all year long in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth on Dec. 16, 1775. 

The epicentre of those celebrations has been Bath, England, which hosts an Austen festival every year. Darcy Johns, a librarian in Halifax, flew to Bath to be part of the anniversary. Johns said she became a devoted fan after reading all of Austen’s novels in the wake of her mother’s death.

Johns said she immersed herself in Austen’s writing and her world of early 19th century England to help cope with her grief.

“That was really transformative,” she said.

Rudyard Kipling did something similar a century beforehand. After his son was killed in the First World War, he read Austen’s work as he grieved. Kipling then published a short story in 1924 about a group of First World War soldiers who are secret devotees of Jane Austen’s works. The story was titled The Janeites, and the name became adopted as the moniker for Austen’s fandom.

“She’s called ‘our Jane’ … people feel that she’s fully almost a friend,” said Johns.

“And I have a friend who says [that] when life gets difficult, she thinks to herself, ‘What would Jane do?'”

The Halifax connection

In marking her 250th birthday, Halifax has seen events, teas, movie screenings, and a book launch for a new novel, The Austens, that delves into the Nova Scotian connection to Austen.

The book brings to life the writer’s friendship with her sister-in-law, Fanny, who lived in Halifax between 1809 and 1811. Jane’s younger brother, who was married to Fanny, was stationed in the city with the British Royal Navy.

“I’m excited to share this story that I’ve been working on for such a long time,” said author Sarah Emsley, as well as an Austen scholar and member of JASNA.

She spent 18 years working on her debut novel, although she’s written extensively about Austen in the past.

Emsley’s first brush with Austen came as a teenager, but it took reading Sense and Sensibility during graduate school to fall hard for her.

“Some of it is the humour. It’s delightful, hilarious, and at the same time deeply serious. And there’s a kind of magic in that combination, that she can be delightfully funny and deeply serious, sometimes at the same time,” said Emsley.

“And there’s a profound understanding of human nature in her books.”

At Emsley’s October book launch — held, appropriately, in the Regency ballroom of the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax — Austen devotion was high. Janeites in attendance were eager to dispel any notions that her work boils down to depictions of a smouldering Mr. Darcy.

“I think often times, people may think of Austin’s work as an ancient form of rom-com,” said Charlene Carr, a Canadian novelist and author of We Rip The World Apart.

“And it’s not… it’s complex and it looks at human relationships and it’s stood the test of time for a reason.”

Emsley agrees that re-reading Austen’s six novels is both rewarding and relevant, 250 years on. 

“There’s something about her writing that has the power to give us tools, to help navigate the challenges of the world that we actually live in,” she said.

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