Guest post by Janine Barchas

Today marks the start of the annual gathering of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), hosted this year in Minneapolis. This particular meeting celebrates the bicentennial of Pride and Prejudice (first published in 1813) with the pomp that is due this standout literary favorite, including workshops, exhibits, lectures, readings, and, of course, a Regency-style ball. Because I recently published a book about Jane Austen as a consummate name-dropper and participant in early celebrity culture, I was invited to speak to JASNA members about the celebrity currency of the names in Pride and Prejudice .

This post is a sneak peek into the new research that I will be sharing with JASNA members about how specific surnames and locations in Pride and Prejudice slyly point to the ancestral home of the real-world Fitzwilliam and Darcy families—directing a reader’s encounter with the fictional estate of…