Jane Austen in popular culture
The novels of Jane Austen were unknown in China until 1917 when Wei Yi mentioned Austen in her book "Brief Profiles of Famous Western Novelists" where she was described as "one of the celebrated English novelists". Only a few western novels were translated in China during the 19th century, and it was not until 1898 when Lin Shu translated "Camille" by Alexandre Dumas, which unexpectedly become a bestseller, that Chinese publishers became interested in western books. Austen was first translated into Chinese in 1935, when two editions of "Pride and Prejudice" were published in Beijing and Shanghai. After 1949 Austen was out of favor in the People's Republic of China as a "bourgeois" author whose work was considered frivolous. In the 1950s most of the foreign books published in the People's Republic were translations of Soviet books, and Western authors were only translated into Chinese if they were "revolutionary" writers like Lord Byron or if their books portrayed Western societies in an unflattering light like Charles Dickens; Austen did not serve either purpose very well. In 1956, Austen was first translated in the People's Republic when "Pride and Prejudice" was published in Beijing, with an introduction by the translator explaining how the translation was justified on Marxist grounds as the novel showed the decline of feudalism and rise of capitalism in England. In 1965 Dong Hengxun, an academic, condemned Austen in an article titled "The Description of Love in "Pride and Prejudice"" in the "Guangming Daily" as "artistically insignificant". Austen was banned along with other Western authors in China during the Cultural Revolution and during the 1980s, translations of Austen were grudgingly allowed, though officially Austen remained out of favor. The first Chinese academic in the People's Republic to write favorably of Austen was Zhu Hong, who complained in his 1986 essay "The Pride and Prejudice against Jane Austen" that ordinary people liked Austen well enough, but academics had to condemn her because of the Party line, which led him to ask for books to be judged on artistic grounds only. In the 1990s Communist Party condemnations of Austen ceased, and a number of Chinese students produced dissertations on Austen, with Austen being very popular with female students. In 2011 one Chinese academic, Zhang Helong, wrote about Austen's "huge popularity" in modern China. In 2017, "The Economist" noted that in China: "... Austen is seen as having a particular affinity with Chinese culture, where “manners matter” as they did in Georgian England." "Pride and Prejudice" has been translated into Chinese at least 50 times while "Sense and Sensibility" has been translated 10 times in the last decades. Austen's ideal hero as a property-owning gentleman has resonance in China, where a well-off man with good education and manners who owes land is the considered the ideal man. In 2010, Sadoff wrote that the growing appeal of Austen in Asia ensures that market for Austen films continues to grow, and it is possible Asia would soon replace the United States as the largest market for Austen films, if it has not already done so.
Elizabeth Aston
Edmondson's mother and grandmother were both writers published in South America and her father was a journalist. Despite being named after the Jane Austen character Elizabeth Bennet, Edmondson did not read an Austen novel until the age of thirteen, when she read "Pride and Prejudice". She quickly became hooked and read all six of the author's novels. In the late 1960s, Edmondson read English Language and Literature at, and graduated from, St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied Austen under the author's biographer Lord David Cecil. Edmondson described the "rigour" of her time at Oxford as "tremendously useful", as it allowed her to study Austen's contemporary era along with the language and background surrounding Austen's novels.