Jane Austen scholar Juliette C. Wells delivers an illustrated lecture and discusses her most recent book, A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist, on Saturday, August 17, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Morven Museum & Garden.

The free event is sponsored by the Princeton Public Library, the Jane Austen Society of North America – New Jersey Region, and Morven Museum & Garden.

Pre-registration is required, and can be completed at princetonlibrary.libnet.info/event/11125006.

According to the publisher, this latest volume completes Welles’ trio of books on Austen’s readers and revolutionizes our understanding of how Austen came to be viewed as the world’s greatest novelist. Wells shows that Austen’s global reputation was established not by British scholars, as is commonly believed, but by visionary American writers and collectors, working largely outside academia. Drawing on extensive research, Wells weaves together colorful, compelling case studies of men and women who, from the 1880s to the 1980s, helped readers appreciate Austen’s novels, persuasively advocated for her place in the literary canon, and preserved artifacts vital to her legacy.

Wells is professor of literary studies in the department of Visual, Literary, and Material Culture at Goucher College in Baltimore, Md. The author of A New Jane Austen, Everybody’s Jane, and Reading Austen in America, all published by Bloomsbury Academic, and the editor of two Penguin Classics editions of Austen, she will guest co-curate a major, international Austen exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City in 2025. She received her Ph.D. and master’s degrees from Yale University, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Johns Hopkins University.