Preview of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane, by Devoney Looser

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress:

In celebration of the #janeausten250 there will be several new books to honor her sestercentennial. Topping my list of must reads is Wild for Austen, by Devoney Looser releasing in September from St. Martin’s Press.

Looser is the author of mutliple nonfiction literary criticisims and biographies of 18th and 19th century female writers including the ground breaking Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës, and The Making of Jane Austen. Her writing is lively, engaging, informative, and totally accessible to the general reader.

Wild for Austen covers new ground in Austen’s life, her family, the era in which she lived, and her leagacy and I cannot wait to read it. Here is more informaion and links to pre-order.

Enjoy, Laurel

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser.

Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.

All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels cited in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.

Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.

AUTHOR BIO

Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author of Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës and The Making of Jane Austen. A Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, Looser has written for The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate, and The Washington Post. She is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen.

BOOK INFORMATION

Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane, by Devoney Looser
St. Martin’s Press (September 2, 2025)
Hardcover, eBook, and audiobook (336) pages
ISBN: 978-1250361332
Genre: Literary Biography, Literary Criticism, Austenesque Nonfiction

AMAZON | PUBLISHER | ADD TO GOODREADS

Cover, book description & author bio courtesy of St. Martin’s Press © 2025; text Laurel Ann Nattress © 2025, austenprose.com, an Amazon affiliate. No AI: material on Austenprose.com may not be used in datasets for, in the development of, or as inputs to generative AI programs.

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