content: From Becoming Jane to The Jane Austen Book Club, Me and Mr. Darcy toConfessions of a Jane Austen Addict, 2007 was the year of Jane-mania, sucking out whatever satirical bite Austen might have carried two centuries ago and replacing it with syrupy tote bags and cloying t-shirts that allow a girl to declare herself, "An Elizabeth in a Darcy-less World" or (more chillingly) "Property of Mr. Darcy." In all the fervor, the only things overlooked were that Austen's prose is overwritten and dry, her plots torturously dull, and her characters one-dimensional clichés.