As I’ve mentioned – and as would surely come as no surprise in any case to any long-time Stevereads habitué – one of the periodicals to survive the Great Penny Press Purge of 2016 was the Times Literary Supplement, the mighty TLS. This would have been true in any case, the TLS being the world’s greatest serious literary review currently being published in English, and it was only rendered a little bit more true recently, when the editors finally twigged to a good thing and began publishing my Open Letters colleague Rohan Maitzen – a recent issue featured Rohan wafting on for an entire glorious page about none other than her specialty author, George Eliot, and it was like encountering Penelope Fitzgerald again in their pages, or Emma Tennant, or even a certain former TLS stalwart named Virginia: at once daunting and elevating, both clear and sublime – i.e. quintessential TLS material, a prime example of why the paper survived when so many other decades-old subscriptions succumbed to alternative facts and were elbowed into receivership.

The latest issue of the TLS was likewise full of quintessential validations. It was a Jane Austen issue, which at first might be cause for worry, since literary anniversary issues of any kind tend to bring out the worst in the authors who get signed up for them. But in this particular issue, only the insufferable opening essay by Ian Sansom fell prey to that tendency, with Sansom spooling out one bored-sounding platitude after another:

Northanger Abbey is thus either the very epitome of dullness – a parody performed ironically, when everyone knows a parody should really be deadly serious – or a profound lesson in how to read and an exquisite challenge to try and understand exactly what’s to be taken seriously and what’s not.

But the “symposium” assembled by the editors, consisting of two dozen or so writers describing briefly what Jane Austen means to them, was remarkably free of that kind of sleep-writing, finishing up with the great Adam Thirwell writing simply, “I think she is one of the greatest novelists and I have no idea how to talk about her.” And Bharat Tandon’s round-up review of five new Austen-related books was masterfully done.

And the best Austen-related thing in the issue was also the oldest: the “From the Archives” page unearthed Walter de la Mare reviewing some now-forgotten biography of the mighty Jane and very quickly going off-topic to write about her himself:

In her pages the seven deadly sins fade into one – ill taste. Her heroic virtues dazzle us as rarely as the winter stars. Her narrow range, indeed, is Miss Austen’s glory. We just open the door in her novels, and look straight into the drawing-room.

The rest of the issue was, as usual, full of interesting reviews and essays, but the block of Jane Austen articles in this special issue felt like a little extra gesture of reassurance. Yes, it seemed to say, we may from time to time notice your alarming American politics, but rest assured: our primary focus will always be on what matters in the Republic of Letters.