Jane Austen Connects with Mormon Women, According to Austen Bio Sales

Dallas, TX, February 11, 2011 --(PR.com)-- When Editor Howard F. Clarke checked the sales figures of his newly formatted version of "Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, a Family Record,” he found an odd statistic: the Jane Austen bio is selling more copies in Salt Lake City, Utah than in any other U.S. location… by a ratio of 8 to 1.

Why, Clarke wondered? Did this biography get selected by a Salt Lake book club, school, or an Austen group in that region or were there other factors involved? Unsure why this was so--and more intrigued by the puzzle than having any hopes in making marketing advances--he contacted Aspen Anderson, the Utah Regional Director of JASNA--the Jane Austen Society of North America.

"A book club becoming active is a possibility," Ms. Anderson says. "But the real reason behind the sales, I think, is likely to be one of morals.

“Honestly," Ms. Anderson reveals, "I think the most reasonable explanation would be that Salt Lake City is 60% Mormon. While society has shifted away from the culture and morals of Jane Austen's world, Latter Day Saints still believe in abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity afterwards, as well as the idea that women are inherently different from men--although for us, it is Equal but different.”

Ms. Anderson went on to point out that, in Utah, particularly the Salt Lake area, “There is also a great focus on early marriage (there has to be, with the doctrine of abstinence), which means that the stalwart men of our church (who are far outnumbered by the amazing women, sadly) tend to marry young, leaving a lot of fantastic women to be single and pressured by their parents to get married. This is a cultural rather than a doctrinal principle, but it tends to leave a lot of women feeling wistful, and they turn to the romance of Jane Austen.”

Many of the women's mothers, Ms. Anderson says, were also raised on the stories of Jane Austen because of the highly regarded and moral material in the Austen novels.

Clarke adds, "My own wife points out that these are the same reasons many non-Mormon women likely read Jane Austen: witty, intelligent, romantic titles with no smut. Set in a bygone era that prized gentility and mutual respect between the sexes."

So, Clarke believes, hundreds of years after Jane Austen’s death, her stories continue to entrance, encourage, and excite the heartstrings of young--and not so young--women of romantic inclinations who prefer their men intelligent, honorable, and, of course, quite handsome.

(This Press Release and its related article on www.restoredworks.com do not imply any relationship of Clarke's books or web site to, or endorsement by, the JASNA. Ms. Anderson was quoted with permission.)

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