Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, England. Two-hundred- fifty years later, Jane Austen remains one of the world’s most popular and esteemed authors. Why? This event is cosponsored by (Jane Austen Society of North America) JASNA-Wisconsin.
Author Victoria Hinshaw, a Life Member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), will present an illustrated program on the life, work, and amazing reputation of this beloved writer. Austen's stories are the source of numerous films, television series, exhibitions, scholarly conferences, and hundreds of fan fiction works, not to mention bobble-heads, comic books, and a brand of Austen gin. Tourists flock to the modest homes in which she lived, and hundreds of devotees gather in Regency costumes in ballrooms and lecture halls to worship her six novels, published letters, juvenilia, and unfinished fragments and to perform the traditional forms of country dances she enjoyed. Despite the fact she died at age 41 in 1817 and published only four books in her short lifetime, her work is studied and revered all over the world. How indeed did this admiration grow from the days when she anonymously published novels "By a Lady" to our era's icon of literature, fashion, and culture. |
