Join us from the comfort of your own home for a virtual presentation from the AGM archive. Zoom and presentation details are below. Hope to see you there!
Theatre and Theatricality; Or, Jane Austen and Learning the Art of Dialogue
with Gillian Dow, PhD, associate professor of English at the University of Southampton and former executive director of Chawton House
“Trekking with Jane: A Travelogue of Southern England in Austen’s Footsteps”
Winchester Cathedral
Join Deb Barnum as she recounts her May 2025 trip with JASNA as they toured the Homes and Haunts of Jane Austen. We will visit Steventon where she was born, Bath where she lived for five years, Chawton where she wrote her novels, Winchester where she died, and all the places in-between, including the places she visited in London.
At the Bluffton Library, light refreshments served. Details forthcoming.
September 30, 2025, 6:00 – 7:30 pm, in collaboration with the Charleston Country Public Library:
Spilling Tea with the Jane Austen Society
Join us at Main Library for a special evening to celebrate the life and writings of Jane Austen!
“A Quill of Their Own: Five Early Women Writers to Read after You’ve Read all of Jane Austen”
In partnership with the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), South Carolina Region, we’ll hear from Deb Barnum, a collectible and rare books bookseller and early women writers independent scholar, and Kalee Lineberger, a writer and the current Regional Coordinator of the South Carolina Region, for a discussion on the women authors who influenced Jane Austen.
Light refreshments will be served.
The parking lot below the library is free for the first hour, then $1/half hour. CCPL Main Branch Auditorium, 68 Calhoun St Charleston, SC
Please join us for our next JASNA-South Carolina meeting at the Bluffton Library, 15 March 2025, 2-4 pm!
Step back in time to explore the elegance and significance of Regency fashion. We will delve into the historical and political influences shaping style in Regency England, with connections to Parisian trends and early American fashion. Discover insights from Jane Austen’s personal letters, where clothing and society intertwine, and see how modern adaptations bring her world to life through costume. Highlighting the presentation is a showcase of hand-crafted Regency costumes, offering a tangible glimpse into this fascinating era.
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Kalee Lineberger is a writer and editor from the South Carolina Lowcountry. A graduate of Clemson University, she works in distribution at Advantage Forbes Books, and volunteers as a steward at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. She is the current Regional Coordinator of the South Carolina Region of the Jane Austen Society of North America [JASNA].
Hope you can join us at Bishop Gadsden on January 18th, from 2-4 pm for our Annual Jane Austen Birthday Tea – with Austen chat and games! Please bring a sweet or savory to share. Also bring your favorite Austen passage to share!
Please join us for our next meeting at the Bluffton Library, 120 Palmetto Way, Bluffton, SC!
JASNA-SC and the Friends of the Bluffton Library November 16, 2024, 2-4 pm at the Bluffton Library
“Why Mr. Collins? The Church and Clergy in Jane Austen’s Novels”
About the Talk: Jane Austen had a high regard for the church. Why, then, did she present Mr. Collins as a buffoon? Why was he so deferential to Lady Catherine? (He had good reasons.) Did he fail in his duties, as Edmund Bertram of Mansfield Park tells us some clergymen did? We’ll explore Mr. Collins’s words, actions, and character, including his marriage proposal, comparing him to Austen’s other clergymen, satirical cartoons of the time, and Anglican and Evangelical ideals.
About the Book:
The Church of England was at the heart of Jane Austen’s world of elegance and upheaval. Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England explores the church’s role in her life and novels, the challenges that church faced, and how it changed the world. In one volume, this book brings together resources from many sources to show the church at a pivotal time in history, when English Christians were freeing enslaved people, empowering the poor and oppressed, and challenging society’s moral values and immoral behavior.
Readers will meet Anglicans, Dissenters, Evangelicals, women leaders, poets, social reformers, hymn writers, country parsons, authors, and more. Lovers of Jane Austen or of church history and the long eighteenth century will enjoy discovering all this and much more, as Cox explains the many questions surrounding Austen’s clergyman characters.
About the Speaker:
Brenda S. Cox lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She came across a copy of Emma as a young mom, and enjoyed it so much that she immediately bought a volume including all of Austen’s works. She has loved Jane Austen ever since. About twelve years ago she began researching the church in Austen’s England. She found there was no single, accessible book that answered all her questions. So she spent about ten years researching, and wrote the book, Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. It explores connections between Austen’s work, her Church of England, and prominent events and people in English Christianity at the time. Brenda writes for Jane Austen’s World, her own blog, Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen, and the magazine Jane Austen’s Regency World. She has spoken on Austen and the church to Jane Austen groups in Canada, England, Australia, and various parts of the US.
Jane Austen in South Carolina 