This month marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, and across the country and the world, Austen fans are promenading forth to mark the occasion with balls, tours, and fetes. There is no denying that Austen’s influence, even all these years later, is immense. But, on the surface, it’s hard to fathom why.

Austen’s novels present a world of rigid social etiquette and constraining courtship rituals that seem about as far from the modern dating scene as it’s possible to get. But maybe that’s the answer. Perhaps there’s something in an Austen romance that is actually more desirable than the dating apps and casual hookups of today.

In a way, Jane Austen is an odd spokeswoman for the joys of romance. The details of her personal life are scanty (due to the fact that her sister Cassandra probably destroyed all the juicy bits of her letters), and we have no authenticated image of her face. She never married, she died young, and she wrote only six complete novels. But those novels do what all classic........

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