E X T E N S I O N JANE AUSTEN S SUCCESS Jane Austen s popularity dates back to the second half of the 19th century, thanks to her nephew s publication, in 1870, of her biography, A Memoir of Jane Austen. Before then, she had not received much attention, though she had had some success soon after the publication of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. At the beginning of the 20th century, some scholars1 started studying and appreciating her works publicly, and readers began enjoying her books again. There were also critics who disliked her, but their open criticism, in fact, sparked2 a series of reactions that are still relevant and active today. Several Jane Austen societies, associations and clubs have been founded; her books have been reprinted over and over again; some of her stories have been turned into stage plays; films and TV series have been produced and have been hugely successful all over the world; many adaptations of her masterpieces or conclusions to her unfinished works have come out, and plenty of websites of Janeites 3 have appeared and continue to keep Jane Austen s name and world alive. The reason for this success is probably to be found in her characters and the themes they have to deal with. Her protagonists are very realistic, perfectly balanced between that very sense and sensibility their author talks about, easily recognisable in their internal conflicts and involved in problems which are still very modern today. Such universal themes are, for example: the conflict between elderly4 prudence and romantic love between young people, or, in other words, the generation gap; the theme of falling in love with the wrong person, the search for true love and the pain that derives from all this; the difficulty in conforming to what society asks; the pain of growing up and becoming an adult, and, last but not least, the optimism which always characterises her novels and which gives everyone the hope for a theylived-happily-ever-after ending.