Although in her novels Jane Austen doesn't spend much time describing clothing, she does spend a lot of time in her letters on purchasing, mending, dyeing, and remaking her wardrobe. What does all that attention to clothing and to needlework help us understand?

This talk will look at some of the history of fashion, making, and mending in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries as well as consider how we can see Austen's fiction-making through a focus on clothing.

About the presenter
Susan Allen Ford has been Editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line, the journals of the Jane Austen Society of North America, since 2006 and is Professor of English Emerita at Delta State University in Mississippi.

She has published essays on Austen and her contemporaries, gothic and detective fiction, and Shakespeare., and is a frequent speaker on Jane Austen. She is a board member of JASNA and of the Jane Austen Collective, for which she is involved in the Jane Austen Summer Program, the Jane Austen and Co. virtual lecture series, and the Jane Austen’s Desk project.

Her book, What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why), which explores how Austen creates readers through shared reading experiences, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2024. Susan is now beginning research for a book on the history of JASNA.