Theme
Austen at 250: "No check to my Genius from beginning to end"
2025 will be a milestone year celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. The 2025 AGM will focus on Jane Austen and her writing, which she once characterized as the "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush," but which has endured for centuries. The 2024 Cleveland AGM led off with her origin story and a focus on the literary, political, and cultural influences while the Baltimore conference will conclude with an examination of her life and her novels, juvenilia, and surviving letters.
Our theme, drawn from Austen’s own words in a letter to her sister Cassandra, highlights her innovation, wit, realism, and irony. The conference sessions will examine the essence and genius of Jane Austen—the milestones of her life, interactions with family and friends, writing development, and the revelations in her letters. Some elements to be explored include:
- Important events in Austen’s life
- Places or relationships
- Real life reimagined in her fiction
- Her writing process and her evolution as a writer
- The importance and expression of particular themes
- Publication goals and experiences
- Psychological aspects
- Change or consistency
- The nature of genius and evidence of it in Austen’s work
(Wikimedia Commons)