Join JASNA-NC for a discussion of our nonfiction selection, Devoney Looser’s Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane. Following our virtual conference in March, at which Devoney was a speaker, reading her book will be the perfect way to dive deeper!
The Details
What: Virtual Book Club: Devoney Looser’s Wild for Austen
When: Mayy 17, 2026 from 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Where: In the comfort of your home via Zoom
RSVP: This event is open to members and interested guests; it is FREE but registration is required. Register for Zoom here.
Accessibility: We have auto-captions available in the Zoom meeting for our conversation, and there may be slides with text and images to accompany the presentation that will be as clear and as high-contrast as possible. If you have accessibility needs we have not addressed here, please let us know.
About the Book
Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.
All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels used as evidence in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.
Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.
About The Virtual Book Club
The Virtual Book Club takes place quarterly with the typical following rotation: a contemporary of Austen, nonfiction work, an Austen selection, and a fanfiction work. Our members Mary Jane Curry, Nancy Martin Young, and Sara Tavela serve as our primary book club facilitators and help coordinate our book selections.