Janeite
Janeitism did not begin until after the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh's "A Memoir of Jane Austen" in 1870, when the literary elite felt that they had to separate their appreciation of Austen from that of the masses. The term "Janeite" was originally coined by the literary scholar George Saintsbury in his 1894 introduction to a new edition of "Pride and Prejudice". As Austen scholar Deidre Lynch explains, "he meant to equip himself with a badge of honor he could jubilantly pin to his own lapel". In the early twentieth century, Janeitism was "principally a male enthusiasm shared among publishers, professors, and literati". Rudyard Kipling even published a short story entitled "The Janeites" about a group of World War I soldiers who were secretly fans of Austen's novels.
Styles and themes of Jane Austen
Compared to other early 19th-century novels, Austen's have little narrative or scenic description—they contain much more dialogue, whether spoken between characters, written as free indirect speech, or represented through letters. For example, in "Pride and Prejudice", which began as an epistolary novel, letters play a decisive role in the protagonist's education and the opening chapters are theatrical in tone. Austen's conversations contain many short sentences, question and answer pairs, and rapid exchanges between characters, most memorable perhaps in the witty "repartee" between Elizabeth and Darcy.