By Bill Gaither
On June 25, 2023, members gathered via Zoom for the traditional summer idyll, “Tea & Miscellany,” along with highlights of the recent Jane Austen Summer Program (JASP) in Chapel Hill.
Member Summer Plans
Members shared their summer plans and named the Jane Austen characters who would be their guiding spirits. Three items were especially noteworthy:
- Sue is working on a paper that she will deliver at the JASNA Annual General Meeting in Denver in October, on the topic “Is My Idiolect Showing?: Individualized Speech Patterns in Austen’s Novels.”
- Betty is joining the JASNA Summer Tour, which will visit several great houses, two humbler locations that Jane Austen visited in 1806, and a series of sites with abiding interest for Janeites: Lyme Regis, Steventon, Bath, and Winchester Cathedral.
- Kirk has been taking in shows before he embarked on a John Knightley summer, and he recently saw Adrian Lukis (Mr. Wickham from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice) in NYC for Being Mr. Wickham, and Jane was his companion!
We are excited for all our members and look forward to hearing about their experiences!
Recommendations for Summer REading
Members contributed a host of recommendations for summer reading and viewing, which will be coming to our website soon! Among the recommendations was the Netflix series Queen Charlottte, the prequel to the Bridgerton series; those who have viewed it preferred the prequel. Reading recommendations included titles from C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series, as well as The Murder of Mr. Wickham and its sequel by Claudia Gray (We’ll be reading The Murder of Mr. Wickham for our fan fiction selection in our Virtual Book Club this October!).
JASP 2023: JANE AUSTEN’S TEENAGE WRITINGS
This year’s JASP was held on June 15-18 at locations on the scenic campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For a schedule of events, speaker biographies, and more, visit the Jane Austen Summer Program website.
All the attendees praised the high quality of this year’s JASP, including the excellence of the speakers, the richness and variety of the events, the rigorous pace, the collegial atmosphere, the rewarding encounters with friends and scholars, and the trove of fascinating information about Jane Austen and her era.
Those who attended confessed that initially the prospect of studying Jane Austen’s teenage writings had significantly less appeal for them than the study of the mature novels that has been the focus of previous JASP sessions. However, attendees agreed that, as a result of this year’s session, they had acquired a much greater understanding of Jane Austen’s teenage writings, a fuller appreciation of the quirks and delights of those writings, and a valuable awareness of the historical context. Attendees also now notice interesting parallels between elements of the mature novels and the same elements in embryo in the teenage writings.
Jane Austen’s teenage writings were part of a great wave of youthful writings that swelled in England in the period 1750-1835. Inspired by examples like the brilliant Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), who died tragically at the age of 17, a burgeoning group of young writers, like Jane Austen herself, enthusiastically scanned the English literature of the previous era, absorbed the literature of their own times, and boldly created and published their own works of poetry or prose.
The young Jane Austen filled three bound notebooks with her teenage writings, which were not published in full until 1922 and after. The writings range from the exuberant children’s tale “The Beautifull Cassandra” to the mature and edgy epistolary novella Lady Susan. These early works (ages 13-19) show Jane’s attention to existing literary forms and conventions and her strong interest in characterization, along with a sharp focus on dialog, an appreciation of narrative conflict, an increasing skill in creating nuances of tone, a growing mastery of prose style, and a sheer delight in storytelling.
Those who attended JASP 2023 especially praised Laurie Langbauer’s lecture on “Young Writers in Austen’s Time,” Kimiyo Ogawa’s exploration of the trope of The Angel in the House in “Lady Susan and the Ethics of Care,” Maria Grace’s description of her use of dragons to illuminate elements of Regency life in her Jane Austen’s Dragons series (“Impertinence and Impropriety: Using Dragons to Voice Austen’s Big Ideas”), Breckyn Wood’s analysis of young Jane Austen’s self-editing in “Austen the Editor,” and Deborah Knuth Klenck’s study of young Jane Austen’s rhetorical effects in “‘If I am Vain of Anything, it is my Eloquence’….” (a phrase spoken by the title character in Lady Susan).
Attendees also praised the English Country Dancing and the fabulous Regency Ball, Adam McCune’s delightful comic dramatizations of Jane Austen’s youthful writings (available as videos and now published in a print collection), the Q&A with writer and director Whit Stillman and the screening of his Love & Friendship, the Silent Auction fundraiser (managed by our member Gisele!), the Costume Rental, and Elevenses (Regency-style treats with Earl Gray No. 69 tea from Tin Roof Teas, also run by Gisele!).
Other highlights were lectures on 18th-century views of Orientalism and empire, on children’s literature in Georgian England, on adolescence and education in the late 18th century, on children’s wear in England 1790-1820, on Juliet McMaster’s delightful illustrations for “The Beautifull Cassandra,” on the resources of the Chawton House Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, and on the intersections of music, class, and virtue in the 18th-19th century English sensibility.
Up Next
JASNA-NC will be playing a Pride and Prejudice Trivia game next month (details here!), with prizes and bragging rights to be won. In August, we’ll be reading Pride and Prejudice in our Virtual Book Club to gear up for the AGM (details here!). In September, we’ll host speaker and scholar Damianne Scott, who will be unpacking colorism in period adaptations in a session called The Shades of Bridgerton (details here!). Whatever summer you have, we hope it’s a good one!