You might think that the Jane Austen boom of the past decade — the one that brought Oscar-winning Hollywood movies, TV specials and even a best seller called “The Jane Austen Book Club” — has helped the public to appreciate Austen.
But you’d be wrong, says Emily Auerbach, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who teaches and researches Austen and who has just published “Searching for Jane Austen” (UW Press, $35).