Jane Austen fans are the avant-garde of digital culture

Watercolor portrait of Jane Austen by her sister, Cassandra. (Wiki photo)

IT IS A truth universally acknowledged that Trekkies were the first fandom. But universal acknowledgment does not make a truth true. In fact, Adrianne Wadewitz, a feminist scholar of 18th-century literature, set Wikipedia straight on this point over a decade ago, when she identifie…