JASP 2025 Speaker Preview: Susan Allen Ford

Professor of English emerita from Delta State University, Susan Allen Ford has served as editor for Persuasions, the leading Austen journal, for almost two decades, and is the author of What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why). She is JASP's context corner coordinator and a member of the Board of Directors. She has also faithfully attended and contributed to JASP since its founding in 2012 as a presenter and discussion leader.

This year during the Jane Austen Summer Program in New Bern, North Carolina, Ford will serve as a plenary speaker. Her lecture entitled “Reading the Americas with Jane Austen”.

If you cannot attend or simply wish to familiarize yourself with Ford’s work before going to the event, there are two lectures currently available, featuring Susan Allen Ford, on the Jane Austen Summer Program’s YouTube channel.

Reading with Jane Austen

Characters in Jane Austen’s works read novels. They enjoy sitting down and perusing books. But why? How does Austen’s incorporation of popular pieces influence the audience’s interpretation of the characters? What does that tactic say about how Jane Austen shapes the audience’s expectations? Before focusing on characters as readers and what that tells a modern audience about those individuals, researchers must first understand more about Austen’s background.

Using tidbits from Jane Austen’s letters and published family histories as a guide, this presentation highlights books that Austen herself owned, the sort of access she had to literature, what she said about books in general, as well as how books were part of the currency of sociability in her world.

Fun Fact: In Jane Austen’s letters, she regularly wrote about books and her reading. In three quarters of her remaining letters (119 out of 161) she mentions either reading novels or the newspaper. She discusses her own work and the business of getting her stories published. Or she shares quotes and reviews from her favorite pieces.

Her Reading was Very Extensive: Austen and Her Community of Great Readers

In this talk, Susan Allen Ford emphasizes the community of readers who surrounded Jane Austen. Through her friendships and acquaintances, she expanded her own world (and mind) by not just reading books but also talking about them with others. It is known that Austen, like most others in England, read the works of Lord Byron. She also regularly read The Ladies Magazine and pieces published by Minerva Press—which primarily produced Gothic Novels.  

Join us at JASP 2025 and meet Susan Allen Ford. It’s not too late to register for this interactive literary event.

Click here to read a recent interview conducted with the speaker, Susan Allen Ford.

JASP 2025 is partially supported by a grant from North Carolina Humanities.