Jane Austen is 250 years old: “Get ready for the muslin and ribbons to flow!”
250 YEARS OF JANE AUSTEN (2/6). In the United Kingdom, in the year 2025, the 250th anniversary of the birth of the author of “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice” is a national event. In the final days of 2024, “The Observer,” the country's oldest Sunday newspaper, issued an editorial to launch the commemorations. “Jane Austen is one of us,” it pleaded.
Some will see it as a simple excuse to reread Persuasion, to cry bitterly while rediscovering Captain Wentworth's heartbreaking declaration of love to Anne Elliot. But, on the occasion of the many festivities organized for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen [1775-1817], others are preparing for more demonstrative celebrations. Prepare to see the muslin and ribbons flow!
A quarter of a millennium after her birth, the English novelist still enjoys breathtaking popularity that shows no signs of waning: each year sees the arrival of its share of books, films, television series, and plays inspired by the author's dozen short stories, or the rare details of her personal life. A characteristic that sets her apart from all her peers.
Her stories are peopled with clergymen, and the most criminal offense committed in them is to run away with the one you love [like Lydia Bennet and George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice ] or—worse, perhaps—to humiliate a kind but rather too talkative old spinster [Miss Bates in Emma ]. And yet their modernity is obvious. Jane Austen is one of us: acerbic, lucid, and so profoundly good and just.
What is its secret? What is the reason for its prodigious length?
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The Observer (London)Humanist and pro-European, the weekly finds favor in the eyes of Labour voters, particularly among the upper middle class.
Founded in 1791, with the promise of not being influenced “by prejudice or party,” The Observer is the oldest Sunday newspaper still in circulation in the United Kingdom. Among its aims, defined in 1959 by its owner and editor David Astor : “To treat one’s opponents with respect, to oppose those who promote hatred, but in a non-violent way. To try to understand people and explain who they are to one another. To practice self-criticism—as progressives, as internationalists, and as journalists—without holding back from criticizing others.” Generally speaking, he continued with a note of humor : “To do the opposite of what Hitler would have wanted.”
Integrated into the same group as the left-wing daily The Guardian in 1993, the weekly was taken over at the end of 2024, despite fierce internal protest, by the online media Tortoise Media. Fears then arose about the sustainability of the print edition.
Relegated to the status of a mere tab on The Guardian 's website, The Observer is getting its own digital platform following the acquisition in April 2025.
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