The Jane Austen Society of North America

The Jane Austen Society of North America was founded in 1979 to provide a haven in North America for lovers of Jane Austen who might never be able to travel to Chawton, England. The inaugural meeting was held on October 5 with a dinner attended by one hundred members at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City.

But JASNA's story actually begins four years earlier, in July 1975, when two of the Society's founders met for the first time in Hampshire, England, while attending events marking the bicentennial of Jane Austen's birth. Joan Austen-Leigh of Victoria, British Columbia, was a novelist, a playwright, and a great-great-grandniece of Jane Austen. J. David (Jack) Grey was a vice principal at a junior high school in New York City, a Jane Austen collector, and later coeditor of The Jane Austen Companion. It was Joan Austen-Leigh's husband, Denis Mason Hurley, who suggested they form a North American Society and kept the idea alive for the next four years amid concerns about the geographic distance and the stress involved in organizing a Society. Denis kept prodding, and in early 1979, Jack wrote to Sir Hugh Smiley and asked for a list of North American members of the English Jane Austen Society.

Joan and Jack invited Henry Burke to join them as the third founder of JASNA. Henry was a Baltimore accountant and attorney whose late wife, Alberta, had amassed one of the finest private collections of Austen letters, books, and ephemera in the world. He performed the legal work necessary to create the Jane Austen Society of North America.

In January 1979, Jack Grey sent letters to distinguished scholars of English literature, asking if they would lend the support of their names to the proposed Society as patrons. Forty-four accepted, and in March 1979, on letterhead listing the Society's new patrons, Canadian and US members of the Jane Austen Society in England were invited to join the new Society. Membership dues were three dollars for the first year or five dollars for two years and included an annual newsletter. Invitations to an inaugural meeting on October 5, 1979, were sent to JASNA's 335 members, and 100 accepted.

That first meeting was covered by the New Yorker in its Talk of the Town section:

Some people who like Jane Austen got together the other evening in order to hold a dinner meeting inaugurating the new Jane Austen Society of North America. . . . By around 5:30 nearly a hundred people had assembled (dinner dresses, subdued-looking jewelry, comfortable-looking jackets, a distinct sense of style). . . . As cocktails continued to be consumed, we spoke with Mr. Grey [Jack Grey]. . . . "We're optimistic about our new society," he said. "So many people still read and like Jane Austen."

("JASNA")

JASNA's ranks have grown to more than five thousand members in the United States, Canada, and nineteen other countries, making JASNA the largest literary society devoted to Jane Austen.

JASNA began and continues to be run by volunteers, dedicated to the enjoyment and appreciation of Jane Austen and her writing. Our mission is to foster among the widest number of readers the study, appreciation, and understanding of Jane Austen's works, her life, and her genius. Our mission comprises three areas:

• • JASNA plays a major role in fostering Austen scholarship by publishing two peer-reviewed journals: Persuasions, our printed journal, which is mailed to members each spring, as well as our digital journal, Persuasions On-Line, an educational resource free to the public.

• • More than two hundred students participate in JASNA's essay contest, and we award scholarships to nine winners each year.

• • From the beginning, JASNA has made it possible for members to help restore and maintain the Austen-related sites that are pilgrimage destinations for her admirers. At the Society's first meeting, JASNA launched an appeal to raise funds for repairs at St. Nicholas Church in Steventon. In the years that have followed, member contributions have helped support Jane Austen's...