Lecturer: Karin Fernald, performer and independent researcher.
Much of Jane Austen’s adulthood was spent with no money and no visible achievements, ‘no more regarded in society than a poker or a firescreen’. Family affections sustained her, together with a love of country life, reading, writing and observing. She found inspiration in the sea: her last, unfinished, novel Sanditon deals with the dreams and delusions of a resort based on Brighton. In Mansfield Park and Persuasion readers encounter energetic naval officers based on Austen’s brothers, whose maritime travels she followed. Jane wrote her last three novels only a few years after the slave trade was abolished in England in l807. The Austen family, always short of money, had strong connections with the slave trade and may have partly depended upon it. In her novels there are clues to her thoughts on the subject. The lectures will be illustrated with sketches, cartoons, paintings and more.