My husband brought in the mail and gave me a package, then said with a straight face, “This is your daily Jane Austen delivery.”

I giggled. “How did you know? Which one is it then?”

You see, there is a Jane Austen deficit at my house so I had to order a new copy of Emma. I’m not quite a Janeite – I don’t belong to the Jane Austen Society – but I’ve loved her since my teens when I carried The Modern Library Complete Austen Novels everywhere one summer.

“Is it Emma?” he guessed.

How many copies of Emma do you need? Two? Three? It depends on the condition, and how often you read it. (I’ve read it 10 times.) I have my Norton from college, but the paper is tan and fragile; I also have a well-read paperback with fabulous footnotes and an introduction; and a cheap flex-bound paperback I picked up at a used bookstore. (It’s not as nice as you might think, except for the flexible cover), So you could say I go through a lot of Emmas.

Another question:  how many copies of Pride and Prejudice do you need?  At the moment I only have one, and it struck me that it might fall apart at any moment. I had to order a new paperback to make up for the condition of the old orange Penguin I’ve depended on for years. (I’ve read it six times.)

And how many bodice ripper covers do you need? Well, Austen’s heroines are not the bodice-ripper type, but some of the old designs are funny. Take a look at this Emma.

Sometimes I donate old Jane Austen books to sales.  In fact, that’s why I have a deficit.  I gave away a circa-80s Oxford because there was a small tear in the cover. It was necessary to buy a new one.

Is there a virtual JASNA now? If there is, perhaps I could tune in to some of the talks and the papers read.

And if you want to know where the phrase Janeites came from, read Rudyard Kipling’s moving short story, “The Janeites.”