Reading Austen in America presents a colorful, compelling account of how an appreciative audience for Austen’s novels originated and developed in America, and how American readers contributed to the rise of Austen’s international fame. Drawing on a range of sources that have never before come to light, Juliette Wells solves the long-standing bibliographical mystery of how and why the first Austen novel printed in America—the 1816 Philadelphia Emma—came to be. She reveals the responses of this book’s varied readers and creates an extended portrait of one: Christian, Countess of Dalhousie, a Scotswoman living in British North America. Through original archival research, Wells establishes the significance to reception history of two transatlantic friendships: the first between ardent Austen enthusiasts in Boston and members of Austen’s family in the nineteenth century, and the second between an Austen collector in Baltimore and an aspiring bibliographer in England in the twentieth.
| ISBN: | 9781350012059 |
| Publication date: | 5th October 2017 |
| Author: | Dr Juliette Elizabeth Connolly Todd Distinguished Associate Professor, Goucher College, Goucher College, USA Wells |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 256 pages |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Literature: history and criticism Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Gender studies: women and girls |