Brooklyn has always been a land where literary minds gather, from Walt Whitman and Henry Miller to Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Safran-Foer. But Jane Austen?
Austen may have lived in England, but her stories and the generations of readers who love and study them are alive and well in America. That’s why hundreds of fans converged on Downtown Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Marriott for the Jane Austen Society of North America’s annual conference, complete with tours of Brooklyn Heights, literary tours of late 18th-century New York, and a Regency Ball.
“Jane Austen is inspiring because she brings together everything: economic criticisms, prot-feminist thinking, and more,” said New Yorker Jaclyn Greenstock, 25, an English professor who attended with two friends. “She really valued people for who they are regardless of class, gender, and power. She questioned the aristocracy… And a lot of us are writers ourselves.”
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