Talk: Jane Austen 250 and the New Localism

Wednesday 21 May, 2:30pm

Venue: Window Gallery, Reading Museum

One of the most exciting recent trends in British non-fiction writing has been the emergence of a ‘New Localism’.

By paying very careful attention to particular landscapes, hill ranges or river catchments, the best contemporary authors are telling us new things about an old desire: to belong in territories we call home. Writers like Alexandra Harris, Tim Burrows, Fiona Stafford and Jake Morris-Campbell are doing this today. But one of the first writers to do it for our own area – the middle reaches of the Thames Valley – died over two centuries ago.

Jane Austen went to school in Reading, and her extended family occupied the parsonages of villages for miles around, including that of Steventon, Hampshire, where she was born. How can thinking about Austen as a writer who thought in new ways about localism help us to read her novels more comprehendingly, and with even more pleasure? In this talk Paddy Bullard will suggest some ways.

About the speaker:

Paddy Bullard is Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, where he has lectured on Jane Austen’s novels for over a decade

(after the talk we will offer exclusive access to the Abbey Gateway building, once part of the school where Jane Austen studied in her younger years)