Austen's fans and fans' Austen

Abstract A corpus of Jane Austen's fanfic is constructed from sequels published in print and on line; it is then compared with a corpus of Austen's own writing, as well as one of contemporary romance fiction. Through analysis of the corpora, the “vertical intertextuality” of Austen's text and the fanfic corpus, and the “horizontal intertextuality” of contemporary romance fiction corpora and the fanfic corpus are articulated. The results illustrate that, although claiming to emulate her writing faithfully, Austen's fans reconstruct a modern Austen who is writing contemporary romance fiction through the “old” characters such as Elizabeth and Darcy. The different “Austens” emerging from this corpus research and other scholars' reading of Austen suggest that the death of the “Author” is only part of the story: we see not only the Author's death and the birth of the Reader, but a ghostly projection of a new “Author” in the reader's cultural context.