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Austen Chat: Episode 23

May 1, 2025

Jane Austen in America: A Visit with Juliette Wells

Jane Austen has had devoted American admirers since her works were first published. In fact, several Americans played a crucial role in preserving and promoting her legacy. Joining us to explore Austen’s reputation and reception in America is Professor Juliette Wells, a leading expert on the subject, who will also share the story of avid Austen collector Alberta H. Burke and preview some of the Austen treasures set to be displayed at the Morgan Library’s upcoming exhibit A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, for which she is guest co-curator.

Juliette Wells, Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College, is the author of Reading Austen in America (2017), Everybody's Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination (2011), and most recently, A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (2023). She has edited the 200th-anniversary editions of Persuasion and Emma for Penguin Classics, with a new edition of Mansfield Park slated for release later this year. A former JASNA Traveling Lecturer, Dr. Wells is a regular speaker at the Society’s Annual General Meetings. She is also the guest co-curator for the upcoming exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 at the Morgan Library and Museum, which will run from June 6 to September 14, 2025, in celebration of Austen’s milestone birthday.

Show Notes and Links

Many thanks to Juliette for joining us on Austen Chat!

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

[Theme music]

Breckyn Wood: Hello, Janeites, and welcome to Austen Chat, a podcast brought to you by the Jane Austen Society of North America. I'm your host, Breckyn Wood from the Georgia Region of JASNA. My guest today is Austen scholar Juliette Wells. Juliette is a Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College. Her books include Reading Austen in America, Everybody's Jane, and, most recently, A New Jane Austen. She has created 200th anniversary annotated editions of Persuasion and Emma for Penguin Classics, and will release an edition of Mansfield Park for them later this year. Most exciting of all, in honor of Austen's 250th birthday, Juliette is co-curating an exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City this summer entitled A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250. Welcome to the show, Juliette.

Juliette Wells: Thanks for having me, Breckyn. It's great to be here.

Breckyn: Okay, to start off, we're going to play an Austen version of Would You Rather? And for this question, I was kind of inspired by museums and artifacts. We're going to be talking about that a lot today. So, in an ideal world, Juliette, would you rather have all of Austen's lost letters or a completed manuscript of Sanditon?

Juliette: Oh, you've made this easy for me.

Breckyn: Really?

Juliette: Yeah, I would have half of the lost letters. I might even have a third of the lost letters.

Breckyn: I would love the letters.

Juliette: I think any of us who are curious to know more about what Jane Austen thought about her writing are hopeful that those letters we don't have access to would offer more glimpses.

Breckyn: And I even—so, you know, I included completed manuscript of Sanditon because how fun would it be to have another Jane Austen novel? But I am interested in her, her editing process, and her self-reflections as a writer. And so I would just love to have the manuscripts of the novels we already have, you know, because I would just love to see her edits, and the things that she crosses out and writes in. We have a little bit of that, you know, like the crossed-out chapter of Persuasion and stuff like that, but I don't even need the unfinished manuscript. If we could just have one of the finished manuscripts, that would be amazing.

Juliette: Yeah, I'm with you. Now, if you had asked me which of the six completed novels that we know and love would I be willing to give up to have the rest of the lost letters? You know, then—

Breckyn: I know. I wouldn't make like, yeah, Sophie's Choice. No, thank you.

Juliette: No! But we don't know what she would have done with Sanditon so the loss is not as acute to us.

Breckyn: It's true. That's a very good point. Okay, Juliette, I have so many questions because you have such an interesting career, you're doing so many things, but we're—so we're definitely going to discuss the Morgan exhibit but, first, can you talk a bit about the Austen collection at Goucher? Who was Alberta H. Burke? What did she do, and what are some of the highlights of her collection?

Juliette: Yes, absolutely. Alberta Hirschheimer—which was her name when she attended Goucher in the 1920s—Alberta Hirschheimer was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and her family was of German Jewish heritage. Her grandfather emigrated from Germany in one of the waves of emigration in the mid-19th century, and by the time Alberta was born, he had built wealth, and she grew up in relative privilege there in La Crosse, learning to love books—not just love reading but love the form of books, love books like a bibliophile loves books. And she learned that from her father in particular.

When she was at Goucher, she studied English Literature, and, after she graduated, she went on to earn a master's in English at her home university, University of Wisconsin- Madison. While she was at Goucher, she made the acquaintance of a Baltimore-born man, Henry Berkowitz, as he was then known. He and his siblings changed their surname to Burke in the 1920s, as many Jewish Americans were doing at the time. And Alberta and Henry married in 1930, and after that she lived in Baltimore. And that is all background to say that Alberta fell in love with Jane Austen's writings —not right away, it turns out.

She fell in love with Jane Austen's writings after reading Rudyard Kipling's story, The Janeites, which is known to many of us, and that story inspired Alberta to give Austen a second try. Someone had given her a copy of Sense and Sensibility when she was in her early teens, she recalled in later life, and she didn't take to it, but she trusted Kipling and thought his recommendation was worth a lot. So, she went and read Austen during her years at Goucher, and then, within a few years of marrying Henry Burke, she decided that her adult project, her passion project for her whole life, would be becoming an expert in Austen and collecting Austen.

This was not a typical thing for a relatively privileged, college-educated woman in the United States to do at the time. The literary collectors whom she would have been aware of, and other Americans would have been aware of, were men, and they were men of considerable, if not massive, wealth. They were men like J.P. Morgan, whose personal library became the Morgan Library & Museum. They were men like Henry Folger, who collected Shakespeare and founded the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and in both those cases those men left monuments to themselves in their collecting—not just the collections themselves, but beautiful, sumptuous, impressive buildings for us to visit the collections in.

And, by contrast, Alberta Burke had some money from her family; we're not sure exactly how much. She and her husband were able to spend some of the money that he earned in his profession as an estate lawyer. They didn't have children. That always helps with collecting, with time and money for collecting. But she certainly was not in the financial echelon, like a Morgan or a Folger, where she could just buy everything that she wanted. And we see in her professional correspondence, as we can think of it, that she left to Goucher on her death in 1975, we can see the documentation of all of her decision making. We can see moments where she looked at an auction catalog and she very carefully prioritized which manuscript letters or other documents, which first edition copies, she thought were appropriately priced, were important enough, had enough personal meaning, to join her collection. So she was quite selective. At the same time, she was also very omnivorous in the sense of wanting to keep track of every mention of Jane Austen that she came across in popular culture.

She began a series of scrapbooks in the 1930s, keeping track of references to and publicity for Helen Jerome's play, Pride and Prejudice, and then moving into the Pride and Prejudice film that was released in 1940 with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier—tons of publicity material about both of those. And then New Yorker cartoons, mentions of Austen in newspapers, all manner of things that no one else was bothering to assemble. So her collection really ran the gamut, absolutely, from items that any collector would have seen as valuable: manuscripts in Jane Austen's handwriting, manuscripts in Cassandra's handwriting, artworks from Jane Austen's lifetime, illustrated books from Jane Austen's lifetime, collectible items in anybody's view, through later editions, illustrated editions, and translations. Translations are a major component of Alberta Burke's bequest to Goucher. She was just really, really curious about how people anywhere in the world were thinking about and representing Jane Austen. And something I talk about with my undergrads is that, because Alberta Burke died in 1975, well before the internet, she had to work really hard at collecting. It was not a matter of seeing something and clicking. Her translations—each of them was the result of concerted effort.

Either she had to go to a bookstore in an international city that she was visiting, or, in many cases, her friends and family and friends of friends knew of her collecting, thought it was fascinating that she was so interested, and she received additional translations through those networks.

Breckyn: Okay, can I jump in real quick? Because I'm very interested in translation. We did an episode a while ago with two different Austen translators, one who does Jane Austen into Japanese, and one into Brazilian Portuguese. And I just love language. I think it's just so, so fascinating, the choices that you have to make when translating Austen. So, what are some of the languages that are represented in Alberta's collection? Are they from all over the world? Are they mostly European languages?

Juliette: They're primarily European languages. When we have multiple copies of Pride and Prejudice in Spanish, Pride and Prejudice in Italian, Pride and Prejudice in French, the multiples represent countries that were—in which publishers were commissioning translations of Austen over the course of years and decades. But there are individual examples of translations from Alberta Burke's years of collecting in Chinese, and Japanese, and Russian. So, we believe that Goucher's collection of translations is the largest and most comprehensive anywhere in the world, and that's in part because we have also received donations of translations after Alberta Burke's bequest in 1975, and our librarians have been acquiring as well.

Breckyn: Cool. Do you see any unique illustrations in those translations ever?

Juliette: The cover images from Alberta Burke's lifetime are artworks by illustrators who were commissioned to design the covers, and those are often just delightful. Delightful in the sense of being 100% historically anachronistic.

Breckyn: Are they all in big Victorian dresses? That's what drives me nuts about the Laurence Olivier adaptation; it's like—it looks like a Gone with the Wind production.

Juliette: It looks exactly like that. And several of the illustrators in the 1940s and '50s, you know, took an image from that movie and put it on the cover—I mean in their own artwork, not a photograph. So, you see a lot of Elizabeth Bennets who look a fair amount like Greer Carson on those covers. The Italian cover illustrators in the 1950s are some of the most fun because they did Elizabeth Bennet with bright red lipstick, and pearl earrings, and a ponytail, like she's a stylish woman of right now.

Breckyn: Nice. That's awesome. Are these things that people can see online? I haven't—or do we have to come visit the collection in person? Is there any—are there digital. . . ?

Juliette: Oh, great question. So far, what is available digitally—open access through Goucher's library—is a facsimile of one of the rarest items in the collection: the first American printing of Austen's novel, Emma, from Philadelphia in 1816. And that is linked from janeausten.goucher.edu, and it also has its own domain name at emmainamerica.org. My Goucher Library colleagues are working on a digitized version of all ten of Alberta Burke's scrapbooks to debut in the fall to coincide with the Baltimore AGM. We are thinking about ways of sharing images from the translation covers, and perhaps even part of the contents, more widely. That'll be a project for a future year.

Breckyn: That's a good shout out, though. The AGM is in Baltimore this year, everybody. Come see it. Come see Juliette. Come see. And there will be opportunities to see some of the collection, right?

Juliette: Yes. I will be giving one of the plenary talks, and my focus will be on Alberta Burke's collecting and the ways that we have reunited her collection at the Morgan's exhibition this summer. There will be a display of Goucher material from Alberta Burke's collection at the conference hotel one day, thanks to library staff and me. And we will have the option of tours up to Goucher on the Monday after the AGM, where you can see more wonderful stuff, fragile things that we wouldn't be able to pack and bring down to the hotel.

Breckyn: Okay, well, that's wonderful. We'll leave that to titillate listeners, like, "Come to the AGM and learn more." So, I want to keep talking about this a little bit, but I love the subtitle of your 2023 book, which is How Americans Brought Us the World's Greatest Novelist. It seems like Burke was definitely one of those who helped preserve and expand Austen's legacy, but how else did Americans contribute to Austen's reputation? I don't know much about that.

Juliette: Americans played a really important role, beginning in her lifetime, unbeknownst to her. And that part of the story—in her lifetime through the late 1800s part of the story—is covered by my previous book, Reading Austen in America. And there I started with curiosity about that first American printing of Austen: 1816 Philadelphia Emma. I started with curiosity about it. There were lots of unanswered questions. Always exciting to find unanswered questions and have the sense that perhaps, using today's research techniques, one might be able to answer them.

The wonderful and extremely knowledgeable Austen bibliographer, David J. Gilson, was really interested in American printings of Emma, and he shared that interest with Alberta Burke. And that was not something that Austen collectors outside of the two of them were especially keen on during their lifetimes. You could pick up American first editions for cheap, comparatively. Anyway, Alberta Burke owned one copy of this 1816 Philadelphia edition of Emma. That's the one that the open access copy is available from Goucher. David Gilson and Alberta Burke did not know why that Philadelphia publisher chose Emma to reprint. They did not know when in 1816 he printed it. They did not know how many copies he printed, and they knew of only four copies surviving. And my research uncovered two additional copies, so now we know of six for sure.

So, in that book, Reading Austen in America, I went to visit all six of the surviving copies. I studied them. They're each unique objects because they were customized by their original owners and later owners. Some of them bear annotations, some of them bear owner signatures. They each have a different binding by this point. They're each in different states of preservation. But that was not the moment at which Austen became widely read in the United States. It was just a kind of foretaste of what would come. In the 1830s, Henry Carey, who was Mathew's son, who was running the firm at that point with various business partners, Henry Carey and his partners brought out the first complete edition of Austen's novels in the United States, all six. And those copies reached a new generation of readers, some of whom became really enthusiastic about Austen. And I tell the story of the Quincy family of Massachusetts. Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard, and his family read from those 1832-1833 copies of Austen.

They read out loud to each other. They loved it. One of the daughters wrote in her diary, "We finished reading Persuasion; I can hardly bear to part with Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth." And a couple decades later, in the 1850s, one of the family heard through an acquaintance that Jane Austen had brothers still living in England, and an acquaintance came up with the address of Francis Austen.

Breckyn: Yeah, he lived forever.

Juliette: Yes, I know, he did. And Eliza Susan Quincy, daughter of this family, wrote a letter to Francis Austen, and, yes, she was asking for an autograph, hoping to add to her collection, but she really went way beyond that. She wrote a very heartfelt fan letter explaining that her whole family just loved the works of Jane Austen, and that many other Americans did, too. Francis was so gratified, as he wrote back, that his late sister's works had transatlantic readers that he sent an entire letter to Eliza Susan Quincy—a letter that Jane Austen had written to Martha Lloyd, who, of course, became Francis Austen's second wife. So, I was excited about all that part of the story. And then I discovered, doing archival research at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is where the Quincy family papers are, I discovered that one of Eliza Susan's sisters, Anna, actually went to England with her husband and daughter in the 1860s, went to Francis Austen's house, met him personally, spent the afternoon with him and several family members, and they just talked Austen chat, basically, all afternoon. She wrote about this in her travel journal.

Breckyn: Amazing.

Juliette: So, to know that an American Austen fan not only corresponded with a member of Austen's family but that there was personal meeting and exchange of enthusiasm was really extraordinary. But, still, Austen wasn't big in the US and it took her time to become big. And what we see is, generation after generation, influential advocates working hard to bring Austen to first-time readers, to persuade people, "Oh, this novelist from several decades ago is worth rediscovering," and, in some cases, to offer assistance to those readers in overcoming any gaps in understanding, or barriers of understanding, that result from time and geography.

Another American in the Boston area who was much more famous at the time, William Dean Howells, took up the cause of persuading Americans to read Austen. Howells was an editor; he was also a novelist; he was a friend of Mark Twain; he was a very influential and eminent literary man. And he first read Austen, it turns out, in midlife because his daughters turned him on to Austen. And, yes, the whole Howells family became Austen enthusiasts, and read aloud, and had Austen in-jokes for themselves, much like the Quincys had in the mid-19th century.

In Howells's position as editor, he advocated for Austen many times, and he often allowed himself to wax very enthusiastic indeed. He called Austen "the divine Jane." Some of his editor's columns are kind of treacly; they don't stand up very well. But he wrote about Austen most substantially in a series of three essays that were part of a much longer series of essays about 19th-century English fiction, and these have not been given serious attention. The essays were originally published under the title Heroines of Nineteenth Century Fiction in a women's magazine called Harper's Bazaar. And, really an unlikely venue, you might think—a women's magazine that had recipes, and advice about dressing elegantly in hot weather, and playing tennis, all this. And, in the course of issues in the year 1900, readers of the magazine could read Howells's very accessible, authoritative discussion of major works of English fiction. The essays are completely readable. Howells really knew what he was doing with writing for a general audience, and I think they would be really interesting for any Austen fan to read and discuss.

Breckyn: This is such an interesting new avenue that I haven't really explored. I didn't know much about Americans and their role in spreading Austen's reputation, so I'm really excited to learn more about that. It makes me feel really good that we—that there were so many people who took up the cause of Austen and were banging that drum and trying to get people to read her. And it worked.

Juliette: Yes. Yes.

Breckyn: Well, that's great. I want to talk about the exhibit at the Morgan now because that's the big thing and it's coming up soon. So, that's going to draw heavily on Goucher's collection, but it's also going to feature artifacts from Jane Austen's House in England. So, what are some of those artifacts? What are people going to see when they come?

Juliette: Sure. Well, I'll start by saying the Morgan has the largest collection of Austen letters anywhere in the world and has important fiction manuscripts of Austen as well. The Morgan's previous Jane Austen show, which I know many JASNA members saw and loved, as did I, was in 2009/2010, and it was titled A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy. And I like to say for that show the Morgan shopped its closet. They brought out rare books and manuscripts that they had, and paired them with visual material from Austen's lifetime, caricatures and other artworks. The Morgan has the best closet to shop for Jane Austen.

But this new show, A Lively Mind, does more. It brings in material from more than a dozen institutional and private collections in North America and in England. So, what will you see when you come? You will see pages from Lady Susan. The Morgan holds the complete manuscript of Austen's finished but unpublished-during-her-lifetime novella, Lady Susan. You will see pages from The Watsons, another unfinished work by Jane Austen. And you were saying earlier, Breckyn, that you wished we had more work in progress, more work showing Austen's process and revision. The pages from The Watsons are amazing to show that. Unlike Lady Susan, which is a fair copy— carefully copied over, no emendations—the pages from The Watsons are almost illegible. There's crossing out, there's adding in, there's—you just see that mind at work, giving the lie to Henry Austen's statement in the biographical notice that "Everything came...

Breckyn: . . . finished from her pen." Oh, that drives me nuts.

Juliette: That is not how creative writing works.

Breckyn: I've seen some videos of Kathryn Sutherland talking about The Watsons manuscript, and she's one of the leading scholars on Austen's manuscripts, and she talks about how Austen writes all the way—she doesn't leave herself margins. I think it was pretty common for authors to leave themselves space to go back in, and she's just taking up every square inch and crossing out and moving things around. I love that kind of stuff. I love that mess. I think that that's what Kathryn Sutherland called—she says, "mess matters".

Juliette: Exactly.

Breckyn: And you can just learn so much from that—the messiness of the process.

Juliette: Which is one of the main reasons why it's wonderful and informative to see documents up close in person, not just a digital facsimile. Because a digital facsimile doesn't show you shape and scale. And I give presentations all the time where I have images on the screen of Cassandra's portrait of Jane Austen, and then I have to tell everyone it's really, really tiny; it looks big on the screen.

There are several small but really important manuscript items that visitors will see at the Morgan show. One of them is the only surviving piece of the novel that Jane Austen titled Susan, and later reworked into Northanger Abbey, and that is a little rectangle of paper, and in Jane Austen's handwriting is "Susan, a Novel in Two volumes." That is it. That's the whole surviving scrap. There are also two different notes—one is signed with Cassandra's initials, one is unsigned—that list Austen's novels and dates of their composition. And seeing these side by side, I think, is really fascinating. Makes you wonder, "Who wrote the note that is unsigned? Was it Jane? Was it Cassandra?" We open up that question for viewers, and we offer a letter on either side of the notes, one in Jane's handwriting, one in Cassandra's handwriting, so that viewers can make up their own minds about that unsigned note.

We are certainly not showing every Jane Austen letter in the Morgan's collection. We're showing several that shed light on Austen's reading, on her writing, on her home life, and on her interests beyond writing— her interests in music making, her interest in fashion, which was a lifelong delight for her, and other matters.

So, the loans from other institutions—Jane Austen's House, Goucher, and beyond—complement the objects that the Morgan has available to show. The British Library is very generously making available one of the volumes of Austen's teenage writing, Volume the Second, as well as the first page of the document Opinions of Emma, where Austen jotted down what her friends and family, and friends of friends, said about their responses to Emma. Jane Austen's House is also very generously making available a number of objects—originals, and, in some cases where the originals weren't able to travel, replicas—that will help evoke Chawton Cottage, the creative household of women in which Austen lived and wrote in the last decade of her life.

And we're also evoking that place by using two of the colors of wallpaper that have recently been rediscovered and reinstalled in Jane Austen's House. So, when you enter the doorway into the show, you'll see the green Chawton Vine wallpaper that is and was in the dining room of Jane Austen's House—or Chawton Cottage as it was known to her—where she had her writing table, it is said, and did her writing. You will see a replica of that writing table and a chair bringing alive the small scope of space on which she organized her thoughts and her paper.

Breckyn: That always surprises me how tiny her writing table is. When I set out my stuff, I take up an entire dining room table with my notebook and my laptop and all my stuff and my sticky notes. And she did, she just—she was so cramped and so small, but, like the worlds that she created in that tiny space, just incredible.

Juliette: Exactly. I mean, it really gives you a sense of the power of her intellect that she could organize her thoughts and organize the drafting and revision of these complex manuscripts without any of the tools that we have. Much less, of course. Find and replace or copy and paste—

Breckyn: Yeah, or like Googling. I word-search her novels on Project Gutenberg all the time. I'm like, "Wait, did she ever use this word or did she ever say this? Or what about this reference?" And she just all had it in her head.

Juliette: Yep. So we have the green wallpaper welcoming you in. We have the yellow Chawton leaf wallpaper later in the show, evoking another room from the House. And Jane Austen's House—I would say the object that visitors are going to be most excited by is the turquoise ring set in gold that the House has displayed since 2012. And we know that fans love this object. Lots of us own replicas of it here. The original will be there, and it will be displayed very near—not the original, to be clear—but a hand-sewn replica of the silk pelisse coat.

Breckyn: Is that the one that Hilary Davidson recreated?

Juliette: Yes. Hilary Davidson, the fashion historian who now teaches at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Hilary made this replica. She developed the pattern by studying the original garment. She handsewed the replica, and she and a colleague at FIT are working on a video for our show that will digitally recreate the pelisse and show how it would have moved when you were wearing it. So a lovely—just like the Costume Institute at the Met Museum—just a lovely video that will help us understand and appreciate that garment even more. And because it's a replica, it doesn't need to be displayed under glass. Not that you will be able to put your arm around it, but—

Breckyn: We can't try it on, Juliette? Wear it around the Museum?

Juliette: No, no, no, but you will have a sense of less distance from the object than you would if it were the original. And, you know, years ago, when this show at the Morgan was first in conversation, and it was years ago; we started talking about this possibility in 2018. At the time, the Hampshire Cultural Trust, which owns the original pelisse, thought that it might be possible for that original pelisse to travel to New York and be displayed as part of the Morgan's show. And, both for timing reasons, when this show is scheduled, and also conservation concerns about the original garment, we went with the replica because we wanted to make sure that we could show the garment upright on a mannequin. That's how you get a sense of Jane Austen's height and her personal style. If you see a folded pelisse lying in a box, in a conservation box, you can appreciate the beauty of the fabric and think about elegance, but you have much, much less to go on than an upright display on a mannequin. So that was one of the, "Oh, we wished, we wished we could have..." roads not taken with this exhibition.

Jane Austen's House is also lending several manuscripts that I think are absolutely wonderful and are not well known outside of the world of Austen fans. One of them is Martha Lloyd's Household Book. Julienne Gehrer made the wonderful facsimile edition of several years ago. The original will be there. We thought hard about what page we want to open it to. This is one of those exhibition questions: if you have a book, you can only have one page opening. You could talk about others, but you can only show one. So we're showing a page with a recipe contributed by Jane Austen's mother and one contributed by Eleanor Austen, Henry Austen's second wife. We felt it was very important to have that object there because Martha Lloyd is such an important member of that household of creative women at Chawton Cottage. We really wanted the story to be not just, "Oh, Jane and Cassandra and their mother," but also Martha Lloyd. So Martha is vividly present there through her Household Book.

We also have Caroline Austen's manuscript—recollections, reminiscences—which she wrote down in 1867, 50 years after Jane Austen's death. Caroline visited Chawton Cottage as a very little girl, and all those years later she wrote down what she remembered of the daily life of the household and the routine. And we will have that manuscript open to the page where Caroline recalls her Aunt Jane's piano playing every morning before breakfast, and saying that breakfast was her part of the household work.

Complementing that recollection of Jane Austen playing the piano, Jane Austen's House is very generously loaning one of the two Austen Family music books in their collection—one of the ones in Jane Austen's handwriting, which she titled Juvenile Songs and Lessons. It's wonderful to see Jane Austen's musical handwriting, which is super clear and very beautiful. And also to be reminded that creativity took many forms in her life, and she cared about music-making.

Breckyn: That sounds amazing. As sort of a tangential topic, how do these priceless artifacts travel? Like across the pond?

Juliette: That's a great question. And that is all handled by the Morgan's highly professional staff. So, one of the great pleasures of being a guest co-curator, as my formal title is, is that I get to come up with ideas and a wish list.

Breckyn: And then they do it.

Juliette: And then they do it. Yeah.

Breckyn: Great.

Juliette: The process is that formal letters requesting loans are written and go out to lending institutions, and then those institutions review their own objects and their own initiatives and plans, and they either say "yes" or they say—in some cases we heard, "no," or "no, but." "No, we can't allow you to have this portrait but what about this other portrait?" So there's room for rethinking and negotiation, but it means that the actual makeup of the show, the so-called checklist, is in flux for quite a while. And then the actual packing-up and transporting is highly professional, and I don't have any involvement with that at all, except in the case that I am loaning a few objects and books from my own collection, and those I bring.

Breckyn: I'm imagining large men handcuffed to briefcases. I feel like that is the level of security that Jane Austen's letters deserve.

Juliette: It can be. And it's up to the lending institution to stipulate how much oversight and security beyond what's considered—you know, anybody would ask for. You can ask to have a courier or curator accompany the object at all times. You can ask for that person to be present while the object is installed in its exhibition case at the Morgan. You can ask for that object not to be touched in any way once that case is closed and locked. But all those stipulations are up to the museums, and libraries, and private collectors, to whom we are so grateful for making this a really, really special show.

Breckyn: So you are, like, big picture. You're the ideas woman, and then you have all of these people who are running around the world collecting these things and making it happen.

Juliette: Exactly. And I'm so grateful, too, to the donors who have made this possible. A show like this has a really substantial budget. It's a big ticket thing, and the Morgan has made that possible.

Breckyn: I really want to make it up to New York to come see it. Because it's slightly easier to get to New York than England, but also down here from Georgia, they're almost equidistant, it kind of feels like. It's a plane ride either way.

Juliette: It's a plane ride either way. Yes. And we certainly know that many people will be making visits, trips to England this summer of all years. But we do hope that, for people who are in North America and visitors to New York City, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see documents, artifacts, artworks all together in one place, telling the story of Jane Austen's life, and her authorship, and her legacy—especially in the United States.

Breckyn: It's incredible. I am so excited for you. I'm excited for anybody who gets a chance to see it. It's going to be a really amazing show. I don't know if we mentioned—I know it opens June 6th, is that right?

Juliette: Yes.

Breckyn: And then runs till September...

Juliette: 14th

Breckyn: September 14th. So, the entire summer. Anyone can find themselves in New York at any point this summer. Definitely go check that out.

Breckyn: Juliette, this has been an amazing conversation. I want to end just with a question that is at the very beginning of one of your books, Everybody's Jane. What does Jane Austen mean to you?

Juliette: Jane Austen means a great deal to me in the sense that she was so persistent, and she persevered in her writing from her teenage years when she had so much ambition, so much talent, and so much exuberance, all the way through years of disappointment. And those are years that we evoke in the Morgan show as well. She sold Susan, but it wasn't published. She had lots of unsettled years after her father died. She had no certainty that she would ever have a version of a home of her own in which she would have time to herself and be in charge of her life to the extent that she could return to her writing and do serious work. So I find her life story as a woman author immensely inspiring. I find her courage in saying no to a proposal of marriage from a wealthy man—with all the uncertainties that came after that—I find that very inspiring. And I find immensely inspiring her devotion to her family members, her lifelong partnership with her sister Cassandra, her love for her nieces and nephews, and the vitality that shines through all of her letters that survive for us from her whole life.

Breckyn: That's lovely. Thank you for sharing and thank you for coming on the show today. Where can listeners learn more about the exhibit and about your work?

Juliette: themorgan.org, or if you search "The Morgan Library & Museum," you can find the show in Upcoming Exhibitions before June 6th, and Current Exhibitions after June 6th, and Past Exhibitions after September 14th. And, about my work, you're welcome to visit Goucher's website, goucher.edu. I have a faculty webpage that lists all of my publications, and there's also the separate webpage for the Jane Austen Collection at janeausten.goucher.edu.

Breckyn: Okay, and again, that's called A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 at the Morgan this summer. Thanks, Juliette

Juliette: Super. Thank you, Breckyn.

Breckyn: Okay listeners, we have a few JASNA news bites for you this month. First up is a reminder for students that the entry deadline for our 2025 Essay Contest is approaching fast. Submissions are due June 2 but there's still time to sharpen those pencils, or fire up your laptop, and share your perspective on this year's essay topic. Contestants must be in high school, college, or graduate school anywhere in the world. First, second and third place winners in each division will receive cash scholarships of $1,000, $500 and $250, respectively. In addition, first place winners will be offered free registration and two nights lodging for JASNA's 2025 Annual General Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. You can find the essay topic, rules, and submission requirements on the Contest webpage at jasna.org/programs/essay-contest.

Our next bit of news is a reminder about JASNA's Jane Austen Book Box Program, an initiative designed to help schools, libraries and community groups introduce Austen to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. If you're a teacher, librarian, or reading program leader in the US or Canada, consider applying for a free Jane Austen Book Box to use in a class or program of your own design. If your application is approved, you'll be able to choose books tailored to your students needs, ranging from Austen's classic novels to modern retellings of her work, graphic novels, children's adaptations, and more.

Book Boxes are awarded to qualified applicants on a first come, first serve basis until the funding is gone, so the sooner you apply, the better. We're currently accepting applications for summer reading programs and for the 2025/2026 school year. For more info, an application form, and a little inspiration from past recipients, visit the Book Box webpage at jasna.org/programs/jabookbox.

And, finally, did you know that JASNA is celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday with a special membership offer for students? In honor of this milestone, Student Memberships in the Society are available free through December 31, 2025. The only requirement is that you must be a student currently enrolled in a course of study leading to a high school diploma, a college or university degree, a trade or professional license or certificate, or an equivalent of one of these. Don't miss this opportunity to join JASNA as we honor Jane Austen's milestone birthday this year with special events, programs, and activities throughout the year. For more information about free Student Memberships, [click here].

Breckyn: Now it's time for In Her Own Words, a segment where listeners share a favorite Austen quote or two.

Carol Ann Graves: Hello, we're Carol Ann Graves

David Graves: and David Graves

Carol Ann: from the Northern California region

David: with some favorite lines of dialog when Elizabeth and Darcy dance together for the first time at the Netherfield Ball.

Carol Ann: "It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some sort of remark on the size of the room or the number of couples."

David: "Whatever you wish me to say shall be said."

Carol Ann: "Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But now we may be silent."

David: "Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?"

Carol Ann: "Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible."

David: "Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?"

Carol Ann: "Both, for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."

Breckyn: Dear listeners, I just wanted to end today's episode by saying thank you. Austen Chat now has over 100 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. We are thrilled and so grateful for everyone who has left a review. If you haven't left a review yet, please consider giving the show five stars on Apple Podcasts. The more reviews we get, the easier it is for new Janeites to find us. Join us again next month for another episode. In the meantime, I remain yours affectionately, Breckyn Wood.

[Theme music]

Austen Chat: Episode 23

May 1, 2025

Jane Austen in America: A Visit with Juliette Wells

Show Notes and Links

Transcript

Austen Chat Podcast

“Know your own happiness.”

About JASNA