Janet Saidi releases biography of Jane Austen, marking influential author’s 250th birthday
COLUMBIA, Mo. (Aug. 22, 2025) — Dec. 16, 2025, will mark the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, a towering figure in literary history and the author of such immensely popular novels as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.” Just in time for the occasion, the Missouri School of Journalism’s Janet Saidi has written a biography of Austen that explores how the author’s work left a mark on both Regency-era Britain and modern society.
“Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist” brings together Saidi’s love for all things Jane Austen and her journalist’s eye for the nuanced ways in which the written word and popular culture are intertwined.
“In many ways, when you’re a public radio journalist, you’re a culture journalist,” said Saidi, an assistant professor and the long-form audio producer at the School of Journalism’s NPR-member radio station, KBIA-FM. “You’re paying attention to the forces that are impacting our culture. And Jane Austen is a huge force in our culture.”
Saidi is the creator of The Austen Connection, a blog and podcast that takes audiences through read-alongs, musings and analyses of Austen’s work. That project began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Saidi realized that many of the societal conversations and upheavals spurred by the pandemic and its accompanying isolation had parallels in the world of Austen.
“I realized these conversations about history, power, race — these were happening in my extracurricular world as well as in my day job,” she said. “The Austen community was already having these conversations, but they were scholars and historians. There weren’t a lot of people in public radio doing it. I thought, let me see if a public radio person can get in the space and contribute something.”
“In many ways, when you’re a public radio journalist, you’re a culture journalist. You’re paying attention to the forces that are impacting our culture. And Jane Austen is a huge force in our culture.”
Janet Saidi
Contribute she did, and The Austen Connection became popular enough that it attracted the attention of publisher Simon & Schuster and its imprint, Adams Media, which came to her with the idea for a book as part of its “Pocket Portraits” series of biographies.
The idea of approaching Austen through the lens of her cultural impacts inspired Saidi to look beneath the surface of the literature, noting that Austen’s depiction of ritualized courtship and love is often critical, not admiring — an approach that sometimes distinguishes her novels from the modern Regency Romance genre she inspired.
“We love those orderly rituals of courtship, but Jane Austen really didn’t love that,” Saidi said. “All the characters with aristocratic titles are terrible; I don’t think there is any exception to that. So that is really fun to unpack in the book.”
While Saidi feels her public radio background has come in handy at every stage of the writing process for both the book and The Austen Connection, it was particularly fitting when she became aware of Austen’s penchant for asking questions that are fundamental to the journalistic process. Using “Pride and Prejudice” as an example, in which Elizabeth Bennett must determine which of her suitors is telling the truth, she said Austen’s protagonists are consistently concerned with uncovering the truth and revealing hidden power dynamics.
“For much of the novel, Elizabeth is trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong, and the language that is deployed for this is all about vigilance,” she said. “You get this in every single novel. She uses words like ‘evidence’ and ‘fallible,’ words you would expect to hear in court or as a journalist looking at the various cases. It’s something that is hiding in plain sight, and as a journalist it’s something I can highlight.”
“Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist” is available for preorder now and will officially hit shelves on Tuesday, Sept. 30.
Updated: August 22, 2025