Hey Austen Lovers,
Welcome my research-based blog focused on Jane Austen and female authorship in the Regency Era. Here’s just a little bit of information about me and this blog to help you become better acquainted with it.
I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay who is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis on Literature. As a part of my course work, I enrolled in a course that was entirely focused on Jane Austen and her works. Being an English student, I am generally more familiar with formal research papers, but with the final project of the course, I was given the opportunity to present my findings in a more creative format, and my professor suggested public scholarship. Thus this blog was born.
As a reader, I have been interested in the world of Jane Austen for many years, and I have loved getting to explore a world of afternoon tea, sprawling estates, balls, gossip, courtship, and romance. As I have navigated the course, however, my interests have expanded beyond Jane Austen’s enticing stories, and I have become more interested in Jane Austen as an author. Additionally, I discovered that I am also fascinated by the Regency Era in general, and even more focused, I am curious about the lives of women in the Regency Era. The combination of these interests provided the foundation upon which my final research project began, and as the project has evolved into this blog, I have zoned in on three specific questions:
How did the societal rules and expectations for women in the Regency Era affect and dictate the roles of reader or writer?
What was the relationship between female authorship and female readership?
How does Jane Austen exhibit these roles and the relationship between them in both her own life and in her writing?
For several weeks now, I have been conducting research across academic databases to help develop a well supported scholarly answer to each of these questions, and on this blog, I will attempt to provide thorough answers.
If you’d like to chat or ask questions, don’t be afraid to drop a comment on any post or head on over to the contact form and reach out by leaving your name, email, and a brief message. I’d love to get to know my readers and continue the conversation. I’ll do my best to respond to any comments as soon as possible, but please be patient with me as it may take me several days to respond. I should also mention that this will not be a regularly updated blog. I may one day return to it if I continue my scholarship of Jane Austen, but at the present moment, the purpose of this blog is solely to present my ideas, research, and conclusions about Jane Austen and female authorship. Aside from that, thanks to all my readers, and without further ado, I hope you enjoy this dive into the world of Jane Austen and the Regency Era.
~ Tabatha Z.
