It is a truth universally acknowledged that a convention in possession of a good audience of Jane Austen fans must be in want of a site.
This week, for the first time in its 45-year history, the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) will hold its annual general meeting in Cleveland.
The sold-out Austen, Annotated: Jane Austen’s Literary, Political, and Cultural Origins at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown will run officially from Friday, Oct. 18 through Sunday, Oct. 20, but there will also be activities on Wednesday, Oct. 16 and Thursday, Oct. 17.
Some 730 scholars and other Austen devotees will gather to dance cotillions, write with quill pens, trim bonnets, fashion corsets, promenade in cravats and pelisses, and enthuse about Austen—the beloved novelist of England’s Regency Period.
Austen, who lived from 1775 to 1817, wrote subtle, witty, insightful novels about women of genteel but modest backgrounds who struggled with their era’s restrictions on gender roles, class, money, and love.
Her most famous line is the opening of her 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
In Austen's first novel, the 1811 “Sense and Sensibility,” she wrote with similar dry humor, “Elinor was pleased that he had called; and still more pleased that she had missed him.... Sir John was loud in his admiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation with the others while every song lasted.”
Austen aficionados will show their diversity of interests by attending the Cleveland Orchestra and Apollo’s Fire; touring Trinity Cathedral, the Cleveland Museum of Art; and visiting regional destinations like Amish country, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and other points of interest.
“We wanted to show off our home city a little bit,” says Jennifer Weinbrecht, who is coordinating the convention with her daughter, Amy Patterson.
At the event, Weinbrecht, Patterson, and the latter’s sister, Beth Dean, will also sell books by or about the novelist at the convention through their business, Jane Austen Books, which has a big collection at Weinbrecht’s Geauga County home.
The convention will be hosted by JASNA’s Ohio North Coast Region Chapter, which has about 140 members. The chapter was scheduled to host the convention in 2020, but it became a virtual event because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Austen scholars from the United States, Canada, and England will speak and lead discussions at the event. Its website says, “We'll gather to explore Jane Austen’s origin story: where she came from, the world of ideas in which her genius was steeped, and the revolutionary world that inspired her to lead her own revolution through her chosen art form—the novel.”
Steel engraving of Jane Austen after a sketch by her sister, Cassandra AustenAusten was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire. She was the seventh of eight children born to George Austen, a rector, and Cassandra Leigh Austen, a housewife.
The seventh child, Jane, started to write in her teens. Never marrying, she died at age 41, perhaps from Addison’s disease.
Four of her novels were published anonymously during her life and sold fairly well: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, “Mansfield Park,” and “Emma.” Soon after her death on July 18, 1817, two more novels appeared under her name in December of that year: “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion.”
In the ensuing centuries, several juvenile and incomplete works have seen print, including a risqué early novella, “Lady Susan,” in which the heroine schemes and seduces. Austen’s tales have also been popularized many times on film, TV, and stage, including at Playhouse Square.
In 1979, an Austen relation helped start JASNA, which now has more than 5,000 members, including about 140 in the North Coast Chapter. The local chapter in 2003 paid for a baptismal font and a fireplace screen at St. Nicholas Church in Steventon, where Austen’s father served.
There are Austen societies around the world, including England, Australia, Japan, and Brazil.
After the convention, attendees may quote “Emma” by saying, “It was a delightful visit—perfect, in being much too short.”