Plenary Speakers

"The meeting was generally felt to be a pleasant one, being composed in a good proportion of those who would talk and those who would listen."

Jan Fergus

Austen scholar Jan Fergus will deliver the North American Scholar lecture. A graduate of Stanford University and the City University of New York, Dr. Fergus is Professor Emerita from Lehigh University, where she taught popular courses on Jane Austen. Her many publications include Jane Austen: A Literary Life, Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, and Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England. Dr. Fergus is well-known among JASNA members for her amusing lectures and articles on whining: "'My sore throats, you know, are always worse than anybody's': Mary Musgrove and Jane Austen's Art of Whining" (Persuasions 15), and "Male Whiners in Jane Austen's Novels" (Persuasions 18). In addition to having written numerous articles for scholarly journals and collections, she most recently contributed "The Professional Writer" to The Cambridge Companion, Jane Austen in Context. For The Juvenilia Press, she edited and wrote the introduction to Austen's Lesley Castle and A History of England. The Eastern Pennsylvania Region of JASNA is grateful to Dr. Fergus for her many years as a benefactress while she was a member of the region.

Maggie Lane

Maggie Lane has written several highly-acclaimed books on Jane Austen, including Jane Austen's Family through Five Generations (1984); Jane Austen's England (1986); A Charming Place: Bath in the Life and Novels of Jane Austen (1989); Jane Austen and Food (1994); Jane Austen's World: The Life and Times of England's Most Popular Author (1996), Jane Austen and Names (2002) and Jane Austen and Lyme Regis (2003). She has published articles in The Annual Report of the Jane Austen Society and in Persuasions, JASNA's journal, and most recently in Jane Austen's Regency World, a publication of the Jane Austen Visitor's Centre, located in Bath. She has also published books on Frances Burney and other women writers. Maggie is a popular speaker among JASNA members in addition to being a distinguished author. She co-founded the Bath and Bristol branches of the Jane Austen Society and has been involved in two successful Bath projects: organizing the creation of a plaque that commemorates the Austen family at St. Swithin's Church and assisting in the creation of the new Jane Austen's Vistor Centre. She presently lives in Exeter, Devon. The Eastern Pennsylvania Region is pleased that such an accomplished lady will add to the wonders of the 2009 AGM.

John Mullan

Dr. John Mullan is Professor of English at University College London. He is the author of Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (OUP), How Novels Work (OUP) and, most recently Anonymity: A Secret History of English (Faber and Faber). He has published widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. He is a broadcaster and journalist as well as an academic, and writes a weekly column on contemporary fiction for the Guardian newspaper. A member of the Jane Austen Society, he delivered the plenary address for their 2007 AGM, held at Chawton. We are very pleased that Dr. Mullan will make his debut as a JASNA speaker at the Philadelphia AGM.

Ruth Perry

Ruth Perry, Ph.D., Professor of Literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver the Carol Medine Moss Keynote Lecture. The founding director of the Women's Studies Program at M.I.T., her work in eighteenth-century studies focuses on the history of women writers and the place of gender in the development of the novel. Her most recent book is Novel Relations: The History of the Novel and the Family in English Society 1750-1810. Her many published works include an essay in Persuasions (1994) entitled "Austen and Empire: A Thinking Woman's Guide to British Imperialism," a chapter entitled "Home at Last: Biographical Background to Pride and Prejudice" in Approaches to Teaching Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1993, edited by Marcia McClintock Folsom), and the article "Interrupted Friendships in Jane Austen's Emma" in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (1986). A plenary speaker at the 2000 JASNA AGM in Boston, she educated and entertained attendees with her speech, "Sleeping with Mr. Collins," Persuasions (2000). She is also past president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. We are happy to welcome Dr. Perry to Philadelphia, where she has many fans in the region.