NEW YORK, NY.- A special exhibition at The Grolier Club marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen (1775–1817), arguably the best-known author in the English language after William Shakespeare. Celebrating Austen’s birthday on December 16, Paper Jane: 250 Years of Austen is on view in the Grolier Club’s second floor gallery from December 4, 2025 through Valentine’s Day, 2026. The exhibition showcases the author’s growing fame through more than 100 objects, including rare first editions, manuscripts, popular reprintings, movie posters, illustrations, theater playbills, and other paper ephemera.

Organized chronologically in fifty-year intervals (1775–1825, 1825–1875, 1875–1925, 1925–1975, and 1975–2025), Paper Jane features objects from the collections of Grolier Club members Janine Barchas, Mary Crawford, and Sandra Clark. In addition to chronicling the printed history of Austen’s novels from elite first editions to popular paperbacks, the exhibition explores the profound influence of the Austen family on the writer’s legacy. A catalogue detailing all items in the exhibition is published by the Grolier Club.

“When Jane Austen died quietly in 1817, she had not seen her literary star shine much beyond a small circle of elite readers. In 2025, Austen is Hollywood’s darling, while supporting entire Janeite subgenres of creative adaptations, spoofs, and scholarly criticism,” write the curators. “The kaleidoscopic mix of objects in the Paper Jane exhibition reflect Austen’s heady reputation as a revered canonical author, whose books simultaneously appeal as accessible, engaging fiction—studied in schools, while also enjoyed as ‘chick lit.’”

Exhibition Highlights

Paper Jane begins in 1775 and focuses on the fifty years to 1825, exploring Austen’s early reputation, which began with the printing of her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, anonymously (“by a Lady”) and at her own expense. On view is an 1811 first edition of Sense and Sensibility as issued by her London publisher in plain paper-covered boards with simple paper labels on the spine. Few first editions of Austen’s work survive in this original state, as most purchasers—Austen’s first readers—bound new books to match the rest of their library. At the time, the price of a triple-decker, a book issued in three volumes, was more than the average weekly wage, making novels a luxury item out of reach of most customers. “People are more ready to borrow & praise, than to buy,” Austen wrote in an 1814 letter, “which I cannot wonder at.” Austen herself could afford few books, instead subscribing to local lending libraries.

1825–1875 was a time of great innovation in book production and distribution in Europe and America. Austen’s books gained wider popularity, with French translations (often unfaithful to the story) and pirated American reprints. On view is the 1832 “First American” edition of Elizabeth Bennet; Or, Pride and Prejudice: A Novel (2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832). In this former Amherst College library copy, male students wrote their reactions in the margins. When Lady Catherine is “displeased,” penciled annotations in multiple hands include “A fig for her displeasure.” | “A fig for your comment.” | “A poor novel so far.”

As Austen’s original copyrights began to expire, other publishers offered her books in cheaper editions, catering to the newly-literate working class. Featured in the exhibition is a bright green edition of Mansfield Park (Parlour Library. London: Simms and McIntyre, 1851) owned by a woman butcher working in London’s Newgate Market. One of the ultracheap books known as “yellow backs” (although not always of that color), it was sold at Victorian railway station bookstalls for as little as one shilling.

Between 1875–1925, Austen’s work became part of the literary canon, deemed worthy of scholarly treatment as well as lavishly illustrated editions. In the 1840s, Henry Green Clarke, the proprietor of one of London’s earliest feminist bookstores, offered miniaturized reprintings of Austen’s work as part of a revolutionary series of proto-feminist books by radical thinkers. Advertised as “illuminated bindings,” on view is a colorful example of Pride and Prejudice (2 vols. London: H. G. Clarke and Co., 1844) that looks like a small medieval primer. Also included in the exhibition is the “Peacock Edition” of Pride and Prejudice, published in London in 1894 by George Allen, with illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Originally issued as a Christmas-time gift book and now ubiquitous on totes and t-shirts, this edition has become a collector’s must-have.

At the same time, Austen’s novels were reprinted in popular periodicals and distributed to active-duty soldiers. Mansfield Park was serialized in halfpenny weekly magazine installments in Dicks’ English Library of Standard Works (No. 11. London, 1885), and the Penny Library of Famous Books series offered one penny editions of Sense and Sensibility and others (No. 27. London: George Newness Ltd., 1896). In Rudyard Kipling’s 1924 short story The Janeites, World War I soldiers read Austen’s novels in the trenches and name their guns after some of her characters. Adoption of the term Janeites cements the growing Cult of Jane.

In 1925–1975, Austen’s work was featured on stage and screen, including the Hollywood film of “Pride and Prejudice” starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. On view are lobby cards promoting this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, which was released in 1940, at a time when Americans were debating whether to join Britain and its allies in the fight against Hitler. This motion picture upholds the idyll of an innocent and beloved England, despite costume designs inspired by the antebellum American South. British troops in World War II also read Austen’s novels in small paperback Armed Forces editions, including Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (The Forces Book Club series. London: Penguin Books, 1943).

The final temporal section of Paper Jane, from 1975–2025, recognizes that Austen continues to be a key inspiration for Hollywood screen adaptations. Signed materials are on view, from BBC Television’s 1995 mini-series, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, to the 2020 film of Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde. Austen’s legacy also supports subgenres of creative reworkings, graphic novels and spoofs, as well as scholarly books.

Providing context for the exhibition is a detailed Austen family book tree, which shows more than 25 books written by descendants of Austen’s brothers, including memoirs, Jane’s unpublished work and correspondence, Austen family histories, continuations, and plays. Also on view for the first time are four double-miniature watercolor portraits (ca. 1830–1840) of Austen’s great-nieces and great-nephews, children of Austen’s favorite niece, Lady Fanny Knatchbull (née Knight) and Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet. The publication in 1884 of ninety-six of Austen’s letters by their fourth child and eldest son, Edward Huggessen Knatchbull, 1st Lord Brabourne, initiated a scholarly reassessment of Jane Austen that continues to this day.