Reading Austen in America by Juliette Wells

#5: An 1856 travel journal kept by Anna Waterston of Boston, Massachusetts, recounting a visit she paid to Austen’s oldest surviving brother, Admiral Sir Francis W. Her delightfully satiric watercolor images of Halifax social life convey her wit and powers of observation. A respected botanical collector, she was also, as her diaries make clear, an enthusiastic and wide-ranging reader. Lady Dalhousie, a Scotswoman, lived in what is now Canada during the 1810s–1820s, thanks to her husband’s leadership appointments in the British colonial government. #4: first owner of the copy of the 1816 Philadelphia Emma now held at Goucher College, where I teach. Such glimpses of everyday readers’ responses are of great value, given how little evidence had previously been found of nineteenth-century Americans’-as opposed to Britons’-reactions to Austen. Neither of these anonymous readers seems to have enjoyed Emma, to judge by marginal comments such as “I wonder who likes this book?”. #3: A very dilapidated copy of the 1816 Philadelphia Emma originally owned by a Rhode Island circulating library, penciled annotations in which had been overlooked by bibliographers.

Smith’s ink annotations in his copy are a gold mine of references to Austen in periodicals of the time, including the first encyclopedia entry about her written for an American audience. Du Pont family papers reveal a cultured, book-loving family, in which Emma would have felt right at home.

du Pont of Delaware, the other by Jeremiah Smith, a New Hampshire judge. #1 and #2: Two copies of the very rare 1816 Philadelphia Emma-the first Austen novel printed in the U.S., and the only one published there during her lifetime-that were previously unknown to scholars. Here are some of those traces that most excited me. Or, we can think, as I’ve been doing, about Austen’s historical readers and the traces they left of their encounters with her writings, traces that have awaited rediscovery in libraries and archives.

We can mark this occasion by rereading Persuasion, by considering Austen’s lasting legacy, or by exploring some of the many wonderful web resources that enhance our knowledge of Austen’s life and times. Now we remember Persuasion, Jane Austen’s final completed novel, which was published in late December 1817 (with 1818 printed on the title page), together with Northanger Abbey, an early, hitherto unpublished work. As 2017 gives way to 2018, we reach the end of the series of Jane Austen bicentennials that began in 2011 with the 200 th anniversary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility, and that culminated in 2017 with commemorations of her death on July 18, 1817.

Reading Austen in America by Juliette Wells