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Author: Devoney Looser on "Wild for Austen"

A Jane Austen at 250 event

Devoney Looser provides insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen and signs copies of "Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane." Birthday cake will be served.

The library has teamed up with the New Jersey region of the Jane Austen Society of North America, one of 79 local chapters of the international non-profit known fondly as JASNA, for this special event to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen. Birthday cake and tea will follow the talk and the author will sign copies of her book. 

Registration is requested to help us plan, but not required.

About the Book (from the publisher): 

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 cited 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 Speaker: 

Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author of several books, including Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës and The Making of Jane Austen. A Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, Looser has published essays in The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate, and The Washington Post. She is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen.

Co-sponsored by the library and the New Jersey region of the Jane Austen Society of North America

Community Room Accessibility

• Wheelchair accessible
• Assistive listening system compatible with personal T-coil-enabled devices (compatible headphones also available for use during programs)
• English-language subtitles for films (when available)
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