December 15, 2014 – Jane Austen in Vermont

You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last nightthe time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over. We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and send her love to you and my brother, not forgetting James and Philly…

[Letter from Mr. Austen to his sister Philadelphia Walter, December 17, 1775, as quoted from Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen, A Family Record, Cambridge, 2004, p.27.]

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In celebration of Jane Austen’s birthday today, JASNA has published its annual Perusasions On-Line Vol.35, No. 1 (Winter 2014). Click here for the Table of Contents to yet another inspiring collection of essays, some from the 2014 AGM in Montreal on Mansfield Park, and other “Miscellany” – all about Jane Austen…and perfect winter reading material…!

Here are the Contents:

The “Ordination” of Fanny Price: Female Monasticism and Vocation in Mansfield Park
Kathleen Anderson

A Distracted Seminarian: The Unsuccessful Reformation of Edmund Bertram
Br. Paul Byrd, O.P.

Why Tom Bertram Cannot Die: “The Plans and Decisions of Mortals”
Theresa M. Kenney

The Monstrous Mothers of Mansfield Park
Marilyn Francus

“Assisting the Improvement of Her Mind”: Chapone’s Letters as Guide to Mansfield Park
Susan Allen Ford

Fanny Price as Fordyce’s Ideal Woman? And Why?
A. Marie Sprayberry

“Favourable to Tenderness and Sentiment”: The Many Meanings of Mary Crawford’s Harp
Jeffrey Nigro

I Sing of the Sofa, of Cucumbers, and of Fanny Price: Mansfield Park and The Task; Or, Why Fanny Price is a Cucumber
Emma Spooner

The First Soldier [She] Ever Sighed for”: Charles Pasley’s Essay and the “Governing Winds” of Mansfield Park
Kathryn Davis

Mansfield Park vs. Sotherton Court: Social Status and the Slave Trade
Sarah Parry

Mansfield Park and the News
Robert Miles