Persuasions No. 32 in the Mail to JASNA Members

Farley Castle, Somersetshire, from the essay by Janine Barchas in Persuasions No. 32

Huzzah! An Austen Alert for JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) members.

Watch your mailbox this week. The new issue of JASNA’s journal, Persuasions No. 32, has been mailed to all members. Here is the lowdown from the JASNA website:

Persuasions No. 32 features very nice essays delivered at the 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon: “Jane Austen and the Abbey: Mystery, Mayhem, and Muslin.”

The issue contains plenary essays by Juliet McMaster, on Catherine Morland’s imagination, and by Stephanie Barron, on the elements of mystery in Northanger Abbey. Other essays explore further the entanglements of mystery, mayhem, and muslin. Gillian Dow and Elaine Bander focus on Austen’s use of other fiction, French as well as English. Stephanie M. Eddleman and Kathy Justice Gentile examine Austen’s treatment of masculinity (and the mayhem it can resolve—or cause). Miriam Rheingold Fuller considers Northanger Abbey as domestic gothic while Elisabeth Lenckos sets the novel in relation to aesthetic categories of the sublime and the picturesque. Janine Barchas discovers a historical source for Austen’s fiction, and Mary Hafner Laney, Sheryl Craig, and Celia A. Easton use fashion, a monetary crisis, and the debate over clerical absenteeism to illuminate Northanger Abbey.

The Miscellany offers further delights, including an essay by the late Brian Southam on Jane Austen and the seaside. Peter W. Graham, Laurie Kaplan, Jan Fergus and Elizabeth Steele, and others range through labor, London, the juvenilia, The Watsons, Isabelle de Montolieu’s translation of Persuasion—and more! Click here to see the complete Table of Contents.

In the meantime, amazing essays from the Portland AGM and a rich Miscellany may be found in Persuasions On-Line 31.1 (published December 16, 2010).

The JASNA Persuasions journal is part of the annual membership to the society. It contains peer-reviewed essays from the speakers at each of the Annual General Meetings based on Jane Austen, her life, her novels and her contemporary influences – and just about anything else wholly connected to our esteemed authoress and the Regency and Georgian eras. It is a powerhouse of information and enjoyment, and one of the many benefits to annual membership that I look forward to.

If you are interested in learning more about JASNA and the Persuasions journal, please visit the societies website.