March 15, 2020 2-4:30 pm
Much Ado About Elizas: Austen’s Juvenilia and the Theater
Afternoon Tea and Talk by Dr. Laura Engel with Britsburgh
Omni William Penn Hotel
Bob & Dolores Hope Room
Mezzanine Floor
530 William Penn Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Dr. Laura Engel will discuss how clothing, accessories, and theatricality in Austen’s earliest writings juxtapose with the controversies surrounding the private theatricals at Steventon inspired by the arrival of Austen’s dynamic cousin Eliza de Feuillide. At the same time, the famous actress Eliza Farren was directing private theatricals at Richmond House. Placing Austen’s Juvenilia in the context of the theatrical world of the late eighteenth-century, she will highlight the contradictory images of women surrounding Austen in her early teenage years.
Dr. Laura Engel is a Professor in the English department at Duquesne University, where she specializes in eighteenth-century literature and theater. She is the author of several books on actresses and celebrity culture including: Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making (Ohio UP, 2011) and Austen, Actresses, and Accessories: Much Ado About Muffs (Palgrave Pivot, 2015). She has given several talks and an invited lecture at Chawton House Library, and is the author of the introduction and notes to the Barnes and Noble classics edition of Sense and Sensibility.
We will sit down to our formal tea at 2:30. Some of us are choosing to dress in Regency period clothing for this event, feel free to join us in this endeavor! Britsburghers like to wear fascinators, if you would prefer to don that accessory!
$45.00, ($35 for JASNA members), includes a traditional Afternoon Tea replete with your choice of tea, assorted finger sandwiches, sumptuous pastries, scones and sliced seasonal fruit and berries. Tax and service charges are included. Vegetarian only sandwiches by prior request.
Please send a check made payable to “JASNA Pittsburgh”
by March 1, 2020* to:
Laura Livingston
2017 Ginoria Court
Export, PA 15632
If registering online, JASNA members use discount code received via previous email. To register online through Britsburgh:
*After March 1, prices will go up to $55 non member, $40 JASNA member.
Click for JASNA membership information.
April 18, 2020
1-4 PM
Juvenilia Reading & Discussion
Ms. Kathryn Zamboky will lead a discussion of a few of the longer early works. We will send out the names of the works before the meeting so people can read them in preparation.
Bridgeville Public Library
505 McMillan St, Bridgeville, PA 15017
June ??, 2020 NOON EST – ONLINE REGISTRATION OPENS
For: October 2020 JASNA National Annual General Meeting
October 9-11, 2020
JASNA National Annual General Meeting (AGM)
Cleveland, OH