Reading Austen in America presents a colorful, compelling account of how an appreciative audience for Austen's novels originated and developed in America, and how American readers contributed to the rise of Austen's international fame. Drawing on a range of sources that have never before come to light, Juliette Wells solves the long-standing bibliographical mystery of how and why the first Austen novel printed in America-the 1816 Philadelphia Emma-came to be. She reveals the responses of this book's varied readers and creates an extended portrait of one: Christian, Countess of Dalhousie, a Scotswoman living in British North America. Through original archival research, Wells establishes the significance to reception history of two transatlantic friendships: the first between ardent Austen enthusiasts in Boston and members of Austen's family in the nineteenth century, and the second between an Austen collector in Baltimore and an aspiring bibliographer in England in the twentieth.

The first book to investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.The voices of everyday readers emerge from both published and unpublished sources, including interviews conducted with literary tourists and archival research into the founding of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the exceptional Austen collection of Alberta Hirshheimer Burke of Baltimore.Additional topics include new Austen portraits; portrayals of Austen, and of Austen fans, in film and fiction; and hybrid works that infuse Austen's writings with horror, erotica, or explicit Christianity.Everybody's Jane will appeal to all those who care about Austen and will change how we think about the importance of literature and reading today.

Due in part to the many film and video releases in the last decade of the twentieth century, there is a renewed interest in Jane Austen in high school and college classrooms. As an educational resource, Jane Austen in the Classroom helps teachers to guide readers who are being introduced to these novels - as well as readers who know and love Austen's works - through the process of «viewing the novel», reading Austen with an imaginative eye, and «reading the film», analyzing the adaptations as re-creations of Austen's cultural and fictional worlds. This book references the latest critical analyses of the novels and the videos. As a pedagogical tool, the text is a valuable resource for educators and students of the British novel and literature by women, offering innovative approaches to discussion, analysis, writing, and research.

With warmth and humor, lifelong Janeite Deborah Yaffe opens the door on the quirky, thriving subculture of Jane Austen fandom.

For fans of I Dissent and She Persisted -- and Jane Austen fans of all ages -- a picture book biography about the beloved and enduring writer and how she found her unique voice. Witty and mischievous Jane Austen grew up in a house overflowing with words. As a young girl, she delighted in making her family laugh with tales that poked fun at the popular novels of her time, stories that featured fragile ladies and ridiculous plots. Before long, Jane was writing her own stories-uproariously funny ones, using all the details of her life in a country village as inspiration. In times of joy, Jane's words burst from her pen. But after facing sorrow and loss, she wondered if she'd ever write again. Jane realized her writing would not be truly her own until she found her unique voice. She didn't know it then, but that voice would go on to capture readers' hearts and minds for generations to come.

‘Jane Austen and her Readers, 1786–1945’ is a study of the history of reading Jane Austen’s novels. It discusses Austen’s own ideas about books and readers, the uses she makes of her reading, and the aspects of her style that are related to the ways in which she has been read. The volume considers the role of editions and criticism in directing readers’ responses, and presents and analyses a variety of source material related to the ordinary readers who read Austen’s works between 1786 and 1945.

In 1807, genteel, Bermuda-born Fanny Palmer (1789-1814) married Jane Austen's youngest brother, Captain Charles Austen, and was thrust into a demanding life within the world of the British navy. Experiencing adventure and adversity in wartime conditions both at sea and onshore, the spirited and resilient Fanny travelled between and lived in Bermuda, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and England. After crossing the Atlantic in 1811, she ingeniously made a home for Charles and their daughters aboard a working naval vessel, and developed a supportive friendship with his sister, Jane. In Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister, Fanny’s articulate and informative letters – transcribed in full for the first time and situated in their meticulously researched historical context – disclose her quest for personal identity and autonomy, her maturation as a wife and mother, and the domestic, cultural, and social milieu she inhabited. Sheila Johnson Kindred also investigates how Fanny was a source of naval knowledge for Jane, and how much she was an inspiration for Austen’s literary invention, especially for the female naval characters in Persuasion. Although she died young, Fanny’s story is a compelling record of female naval life that contributes significantly to our limited knowledge of women’s roles in the Napoleonic Wars. Enhanced by rarely seen illustrations, Fanny’s life story is a rich new source for Jane Austen scholars and fans of her fiction as well as for those interested in biography, women’s letters, and history of the family.