The enduring appeal of Jane Austen, 250 years after her birth
The novelist’s anniversary has inspired a raft of admiring books. But can they explain why she still delights 21st-century readers?
The novelist’s anniversary has inspired a raft of admiring books. But can they explain why she still delights 21st-century readers?

The writer’s Regency settings hold lessons for making friends on social media

Pay attention to trends, extract what is useful and ignore bad-faith critics

Reading for both pleasure and betterment endures — even if unquestioning faith in literary canons and critical authority is gone

What novels about buying stuff reveal about us

Astringent, unsparing and generous by turns, the Canadian writer’s memoir is as compulsively readable as her best fiction

Old and new worlds collide — ‘roughness with refined, serious with playful’ — in a playbook that delights in breaking the rules