Devoney Looser: Wild for Austen

Author and ASU Regents Professor of English Devoney Looser shares her latest novel, the fascinating and surprising untold story of Jane Austen's life, writing, and legacy, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of her birth. In conversation with award-winning author Tara Ison.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for — she called herself a “wild Beast” in a letter to her sister — and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition (imagine Pride and Prejudice the musical starring Judy Garland!) and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels cited in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.

ABOUT THE AUTHORDevoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author of Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës and The Making of Jane Austen. A Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, Looser has written for The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate, and The Washington Post. She is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen.ABOUT THE MODERATORTara Ison is the award-winning author of four novels, an essay collection, and a short story collection. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.This event is at our Phoenix location at 300 West Camelback Road, steps from the uptown Light Rail stop and directly across from the Park and Ride at Third Ave and Camelback.

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