Join the Friends of the Library for a special talk by Professor Penny Gay, Jane Austen’s theatrical imagination: How the writer adds value for the attentive reader.

In this year of the  250^th anniversary of Austen’s birth, Penny Gay will celebrate and examine Austen’s creation of characters’ lives in specified places – houses, villages, and towns - and the symbolic significance of objects of quotidian use in the dramas that make up the plots of her novels. The talk will be illustrated with PowerPoint slides, and a display of relevant 19^th-century books from Fisher’s collection.

About the presenter

Penny Gay is Professor Emerita in English and Drama at the University of Sydney, where she taught for over 35 years. Her principal research and publications are in theatre and performance history, particularly in relation to Shakespearean performance (both historic and contemporary), 18th-century drama, and the work of women actors and theatre-makers. Her book Jane Austen and the Theatre (CUP, 2002) argues for the influence of English 18th-century theatre on Austen’s literary imagination. She has also published numerous essays and articles on Austen’s novels in relation to other aspects of early 19th-century social and domestic life

Light refreshments will be served