Natalie Jenner on Jane Austen as a source of “sustenance, resilience, and hope”
“I don’t know if any author has ever been more influenced by Jane Austen, or more personally indebted. When my husband was diagnosed in 2017 with a rare and deadly lung disease, the only books I could read were hers. When life somewhat stabilized, I took a solo trip to Chawton so that I could walk in Austen’s footsteps and thank her for helping me through such a difficult time.”
The May installment of “Unexpectedly Austen,” the series Liz Philosophos Cooper and I are co-editing this year in honour of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, features internationally bestselling author Natalie Jenner’s reflections on what Austen means to her. She writes of finding “sustenance, resilience, and hope” in Jane Austen’s world.
Natalie is the author of The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls, and Every Time We Say Goodbye, and her new novel, Austen at Sea, was published earlier this month—congratulations, Natalie! Last summer, I had the privilege of sharing a first glimpse of a chapter from Austen at Sea here, as part of my Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility.
You can read Natalie Jenner’s reflections in full on the Jane Austen Society of North America website. The May installment of “Unexpectedly Austen” also includes quotations from Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians, who says that in reading Austen’s novels he felt as if he were reading about members of his own family, and Shannon Hale, author of Austenland, who writes that “Whenever we’re reading her books, we shamelessly claim Jane Austen as our best friend.” This month, we’re also featuring the story of Albert the orangutan, a passionate fan of Pride and Prejudice. Michael Krause of Gdansk Zoo in Poland describes reading the novel aloud at bedtime to help Albert go to sleep.
Read all the tributes and quotations posted to date on the “Unexpectedly Austen” page: from Anna Quindlen and Dwyane Wade (January); Adjoa Andoh and John Mullan (February); Jeanne Birdsall, Taylor Swift, Ian McEwan, and Margaret Drabble (March); and George Elliott Clarke, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Azar Nafisi (April).
I’ll end today’s post with photos of a delightful Yellow Warbler in the Annapolis Valley and spring blooms in the Historic Gardens in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. These were taken recently by Brenda Barry and are included here with her permission.
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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:
“A sunny Nova Scotia May day” (Budge Wilson’s short story “The Leaving” and the Halifax Public Gardens)
Read more about my books, including St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues, and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.
Copyright Sarah Emsley 2025 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.
