Who’s messing with Jane?: Graphic novels and the Jane Austen fan

Over the last two decades, adaptations of Jane Austen’s works as well as numerous works of Austen fan fiction have saturated contemporary culture. In addition to realistic, period-piece dramas that retell the novels in a linear, realistic, representational form, Austen’s body of work has inspired spin-offs, spoofs and homages, including in 2009 a graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice. By examining how readers of Jane Austen novels respond to Nancy Butler’s graphic novel adaptations, I identify key shifts in the development of the Jane Austen fan community and provide an overview of the emergence of classical prose in a graphic novel format. Then I turn to the Butler’s adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Northanger Abbey to explore how fans respond to comic versions of Jane Austen’s works. In particular, by focusing attention on the use of the narrative voice, panel structure and sequence, and character illustrations in these graphic novel adaptations, one can better understand why these participants in this study found these adaptations less satisfying than Austen’s books, subsequent adaptations of her works and other forms of fan fiction.