Did Jane Austen celebrate Halloween? The short answer to this question is no. Now for the long answer… Halloween, as we know and celebrate it today (with the accompanying trick-or-treating, costume wearing, and pumpkin carving) did not exist as such in Regency England. What Jane Austen likely observed was All Hallows’ Eve, the Christian holy day that precedes All Hallows’ Day (also known as All Saints’ Day) and that eventually combined with various ancient and contemporary su

A new hobby has taken wing these past two decades, and it has come to roost on the internet: fanfiction. Fanfiction is a generic label used to group together a variety of stories based on movies, television shows, and books—stories written by fans. The phenomenon is so pervasive that students have even written papers on this new genre of literature. Although the characters who come to life in these stories—such as Mulder and Scully of the X-Files—are often the property of o