Hello Jasmine and welcome to My Jane Austen Book Club! My first question for you is “When was your first encounter with Jane Austen”?
I first fell in love with Jane Austen while reading Persuasion at age nineteen while studying abroad as an associate member of Keble College at the University of Oxford.
Soon thereafter, I read Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.
In all three instances, I was struck by Austen’s realistic heroines. It was the
first time I had ever encountered female characters in any novel that seemed so
relatable—so like me, in fact! I loved seeing complicated, bookish, outspoken,
flawed women change and grow through the course of each novel.
