Persuasions No. 37

Persuasions 37 was mailed to all JASNA members on May 5 and should be arriving in approximately two weeks.  An ebook version of the journal will also be available for download soon.

This new issue contains ten essays from the 2015 AGM in Louisville, Living in Jane Austen’s World.  Christine Alexander and Juliet McMaster survey the subject and style of young writers during Jane Austen’s time.  Village life—from the perspectives of the farmer and of the inhabitants of the parsonage—is explored by Linda Slothouber and Sara Bowen, respectively, while Alden O’Brien examines how ladies in the country adapted the fashions of their London cousins.  Inger Brodey makes sense of sensibility, and Rachel Brownstein and Jocelyn Harris both investigate Austen’s affinity for caricature.  Stephanie Eddleman, Amanda Vickery, and Gillian Dow variously consider the difficulties for women—fictional and real—as they faced the prospect of aging, particularly when unmarried.

The Miscellany offers a true mixture of delights, beginning with Linda Zionkowski and Mimi Hart’s study of Jane Austen’s attitude toward amateur musicianship.  While Elaine Bander examines the ways Austen composed her world of words and Anthony Domestico considers “close reading” and “close writing” in Emma, Aoife Byrne looks at Austen’s fictional use of a particular thing—the gig.  Lauren Wilwerding considers amatory gifts in Sense and Sensibility, Patrick McGraw scrutinizes a misquotation in Emma, and Grace Miller sets Persuasion in the context of naval homecoming.  Finally, Isis Herrero López surveys three translations of Northanger Abbey published in Francoist Spain.

If your appetite has been whetted and your copy of Persuasions 37 has not yet arrived in the mail, you can look back at December’s Persuasions On-Line, which features more essays on Jane Austen’s world and a lively Miscellany of its own.


James Gillray’s “Farmer Giles & his Wife showing off their daughter Betty to their Neighbours
on her return from School” (1809), from the essay by Linda Slothouber in Persuasions No. 37