In revising this Introduction, I have left most of the material as it was written nine years ago, and I take the liberty of echoing Jane Austen's ‘Advertisement by the authoress to Northanger Abbey’ to point out that during these nine years ‘places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes’. I cannot pretend to have kept up with these changes; so I have primarily expanded on some points that I judged obscure or too summary, elaborated a few textual details, increased the bibliography, and corrected errors of reference. I have added a new chapter on the amazing growth of novel adaptations and spin-offs from the works and on the exploitation of the image of Jane Austen herself and the technicolour Regency she is made to inhabit: taken all together, these uses, adaptations, and images now form the global Jane Austen ‘industry’.

Thanks to Emily Auerbach, Diana Birchall, Sandie Byrne, Devoney Looser, Dorothea-Sofia Rossellini, and Helen Taylor for guiding me through this extraordinary new world.