Sarah Emsley's Blog, page 2

“The most important thing I go on learning from Jane Austen is to view the world at a comedic distance,” writer and photographer Shawna Lemay says in the tribute she composed for “Unexpectedly Austen,” the series I’m co-editing with Liz Philosophos Cooper for the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth. “I read Jane Austen,” Shawna says, “because she’s funny and she’s sharp and she’s tender. I read her for her layers of understanding and for the way she sees.”

Today marks the 208th anniversary of Austen’s death on July 18, 1817. This is perhaps a moment to pause in the midst of this year’s 250th birthday celebrations and reflect on the sad anniversary of her death at age forty-one. We will of course never know what she might have written if she had lived longer. But we have her six famous novels, along with her letters and shorter works that weren’t published during her lifetime. What a gift she gave to generations of readers, who continue to find new layers in her work, new perspectives that may help us understand both the lives of her characters and the world we live in now.

“Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?”

– Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, June 17, 1808

Later in this letter to her sister, Jane Austen writes, “You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me.” Inspired by Austen’s words, Shawna Lemay wrote about “The Sponge-Cake Model of Friendship” for All Lit Up, back in 2018. In this essay, she talks about how the Austen sisters shared details about “important nothings,” and she suggests that “it’s the writing of sponge-cakes to each other that comforts, that makes each feel less alone.” (I recommended this essay here a couple of years ago and talked about the “sponge-cake” letters my sister and I have exchanged over the years.)

Photo by Shawna Lemay

In the tribute she wrote for “Unexpectedly Austen,” Shawna says she learns “from Jane Austen to delight in details, in sponge-cake, if you will. I learn about the juiciness of one’s important nothings, about living a life deeply interested in others.”

Read Shawna’s tribute in full on the JASNA website.

You might also like to read her recent post “Where Shall I Begin? Living with Jane Austen,” in which she highlights Adjoa Andoh’s contribution to “Unexpectedly Austen.” Andoh, well known as Lady Danbury from Bridgerton, says, “I have yet to see a stage or film version of one of Austen’s novels that successfully communicates the wit, humour and acerbic voice of the narrator who is Austen. Without that voice, all the stories are reduced to something much less interesting.”

Shawna writes, “as much as I have enjoyed the film adaptations, each time I watch one, I’m always drawn back to the texts. That is where the genius resides, at the level of the sentence, the paragraph. If you’ve only watched the movies, you only know a small sliver of Jane Austen’s staggering accomplishments. Every re-reading will reward you with a new and deeper understanding of humanity, of her genius. If you truly wish to understand the meaning of ‘wit,’ it is there in Austen’s works.”

Our July installment of “Unexpectedly Austen” also includes quotations from writer and comedian Andrew Hunter Murray and novelist and academic Julie Schumacher.

Murray says Pride and Prejudice gets better with each rereading: “Just when you think you’ve got everything out of it, you find more jokes, more wisdom, more understanding. It’s stunning. Plus, everyone fancies Lizzie.”

After being described as the “Funniest Woman in America,” Schumacher wrote an essay called “What if You Win a Comedy Award But Don’t Think You’re Funny?: “My idea of funny is Jane Austen,” she writes, “especially Pride and Prejudice. ‘Read a lot of Jane Austen,’ I want to say, when someone asks, ‘and maybe then you’ll be funny.’”

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

A Bookmark Plaque in Halifax, NS for Budge Wilson’s Story “The Leaving” (details about the Budge Wilson Bookmark and the fundraiser our Nova Scotia Reading Circle for Project Bookmark launched recently)

“Jane Austen had pinned me to the wall” (A “scrapbook” post with a quotation from Robert Gottlieb’s memoir Avid Reader, links to recent articles, and photos of flowers and Halifax harbour)

(P.S. If you’re interested in the celebration of “Jane Austen in the Public Gardens” in Halifax on August 17th, rsvp on our Facebook event page. All are welcome!)

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.

Project Bookmark Canada recently announced that a Bookmark plaque will be unveiled in Halifax for Budge Wilson’s short story “The Leaving.” I’m the organizer of the Nova Scotia Reading Circle for Project Bookmark Canada, and I’m thrilled that we can share this exciting news at last. We’ve launched a fundraiser to help ensure we can make this happen, and we’d be tremendously grateful for your support. Every donation, large or small, will help! Donate using this link on the Project Bookmark website.

The Budge Wilson Bookmark will be the third Bookmark for Nova Scotia and the first on Project Bookmark Canada’s Literary Trail to be installed on a university campus.

Our Nova Scotia Reading Circle for Project Bookmark has been working hard on this project for a long time, to honour the brilliant work of the late Budge Wilson. Budge published her first book at age fifty-six, and then—inspiring late bloomers everywhere—thirty-three books after that before she died in 2021.

She wrote short stories (including the ones that appeared in her 1990 collection The Leaving, which won the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award and the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults), picture books (including the beloved story A Fiddle for Angus), novels (including a prequel to L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, entitled Before Green Gables), and poetry (she was in her late eighties when she published her first book of poetry, After Swissair, which honoured those affected by the tragic crash of Swissair Flight 111).

Alexander MacLeod, professor of English at Saint Mary’s University and a member of our Reading Circle, considers Budge Wilson “one of the most important artists in the history of Atlantic Canada.”

I took this photo of Budge Wilson at a bookstore signing for After Swissair

Back in 2019, our Reading Circle hosted “Budge’s Birthday Bash” at Woozles bookstore to celebrate Budge’s 92nd birthday and to share the passages from fiction and poetry that we had recommended to Project Bookmark Canada for consideration for a Bookmark. It was a wonderful and memorable evening, and we were all delighted when Budge told us it was her “best birthday ever.”

Budge Wilson at the Birthday Bash (photo by Andrew B. Conrad)

Not long after that, we had to put the Budge Bookmark project on hold for a while because of the pandemic. (And someday, we could tell the story of other obstacles that stood in the way…) But the Reading Circle, the Wilson family, and other supporters of the Budge Bookmark were determined to honour Budge’s writing.

We look forward to celebrating the unveiling of a Bookmark plaque for a passage from “The Leaving” in the not-too-distant future (date to be confirmed—I’ll share it here when we know for sure). A huge thank you to Dalhousie University, especially Jennifer Andrews, Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, for making it possible to install the Budge Wilson Bookmark on the Dal campus near Shirreff Hall, the residence Budge lived in as a student in the 1940s.

In “The Leaving,” a twelve-year-old girl from rural Nova Scotia visits Halifax and Dalhousie with her mother and catches a glimpse of the wider world and a future that could be hers. It is a powerful narrative of a quiet act of rebellion and emancipation. The narrator, looking back on this trip to the city with her mother, says that

she took me out to Dalhousie University, and we walked among the granite buildings and beside the playing fields. “If yer as smart as the teacher claims,” she said, “maybe you’ll come here some day t’learn.” I thought this highly unlikely. If we couldn’t afford running water, how could we afford such a thing as that? I said so.

“They’s ways,” she said.

We’re grateful to all those who have made donations to help make this Bookmark happen—even before our Reading Circle had launched a fundraiser. It says a great deal about Budge that fans of her work started to send money even before any of the details were confirmed.

We do still need to raise funds to cover a few additional costs. Our hope, now, is that even more of you will want to donate to the Budge Bookmark. Please join us in celebrating the work of the brilliant and beloved Budge Wilson!

To donate, visit the Project Bookmark Canada website.

You can specify that the donation be toward the Budge Wilson Bookmark, or a general donation for the continued work of Project Bookmark Canada. If you wish to donate by cheque, please contact Hughena Matheson (president at projectbookmarkcanada dot ca) for the appropriate mailing address.

You’re welcome to join our Facebook group for the Nova Scotia Reading Circle.

Read more about our Nova Scotia Reading Circle in this 2017 piece on the Project Bookmark Canada website. (Includes a photo of members of our group holding copies of books by Budge Wilson.)

See photos from Reading Circle member Naomi MacKinnon’s visits to Bookmarks for works by Terry Griggs (Owen Sound, ON), Ken Babstock (Toronto, ON), Elizabeth Hay (Ottawa, ON), Dennis Lee (Toronto, ON), Merilyn Simonds (Kingston, ON), and L.M. Montgomery (Cavendish, PEI) here (scroll down to the bottom of the post).

See Naomi’s photos of the first Bookmark in Nova Scotia, for Alistair MacLeod’s novel No Great Mischief, here (scroll down past PEI photos to “Part 2, Cape Breton”).

My daughter took this photo of me next to the Milton Acorn Bookmark in Toronto a couple of years ago:

And she took these photos of me with Hughena Matheson, President of Project Bookmark Canada, at the Ken Babstock and Jean Little Bookmarks, also in Toronto:

I’m looking forward to the day when we can take photos of the Budge Wilson Bookmark here in Halifax!

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

“Jane Austen had pinned me to the wall” (A “scrapbook” post with a quotation from Robert Gottlieb’s memoir Avid Reader, links to recent articles, and photos of flowers and Halifax harbour)

Save the date for a celebration of Jane Austen in the Public Gardens, August 17th

(If you’re interested in the celebration of “Jane Austen in the Public Gardens” in Halifax on August 17th, rsvp on our Facebook event page. All are welcome!)

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.

I’ve been reading Robert Gottlieb’s memoir Avid Reader (2016), which I turned to after I enjoyed watching Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, a fascinating 2022 documentary about Caro’s political biographies and his half century of working with Gottlieb as his editor. I was intrigued to find a reference to Jane Austen at the end of the first chapter of Avid Reader.

Gottlieb calls his first reading of Austen’s Emma his crucial literary experience of his pre-college years. He says, “When Emma behaves rudely to poor, harmless, talkative Miss Bates in the famous scene of the picnic on Box Hill, I was suffused with mortification: I had been forced to look at my own acts of carelessness and unkindness. Jane Austen had pinned me to the wall. It was the first time I really made the connection between what I was reading and my inner self.”

It’s a vivid metaphor: Jane Austen pinning her young reader to the wall, forcing him to think about his own life, his own actions. Gottlieb says, “It was in the novel, beginning with Emma, that I would discover some kind of moral compass.”

Here are a few other things I’ve been saving to share with you. It’s been a while since I put together a “scrapbook” post, inspired by the scrapbooks created by L.M. Montgomery. I’ll start with some recent photos of flowers:

I enjoyed reading Sarah Lyall’s review of the new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, “A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250,” co-curated by Juliette Wells and Dale Stinchcomb. Lyall writes that “Providing a vigorous counterargument to the image of Austen as a retiring spinster who wrote as a kind of amusing pastime, the show uses letters, manuscripts and more to trace the trajectory of her career and illustrate how seriously she took her vocation.”

I was glad to see this Open Letter From Writers to Publishers about AI, published on LitHub last week, asking publishers “to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”

AI is an enormously powerful tool, here to stay, with the capacity for real societal benefits—but the replacement of art and artists isn’t one of them. … To add insult to injury, use of AI has devastating environmental effects, using great amounts of energy and potable water. … We call on publishers to take a public stand for their authors against the theft of our art and the debased AI work that profits from that theft.

Authors, editors, and other publishing professionals are invited to add their signatures. I’ve signed.

I like what Shawna Lemay says in this recent post about the value of browsing in a bookstore. “Browsing the shelf, seeing others browse, picking up and hefting books, reading passages, talking about books.” She quotes Jason Guriel saying “For my part, I’ve always needed the works of art that matter to me to be near me.”

Shawna quotes Guriel quoting Christian Wiman on Seamus Heaney: “if a person has a single poem in his head, one that he returns to and through which, even in small ways, he understands his life better, this constitutes a devotion to the art.” Guriel says that to steep yourself in a poem in this way is “to approach the state of prayer.”

Devotion to a novel can have similar effects, I think. Reading Emma, for example, to help us understand both our own lives and the lives of others.

Shawna says, “Now is the time to ask ourselves what we love. I love books. I aways have. I love reading them, and holding them, and I love the hope and the dreams and the stories they contain.”

I’ll end today’s post with a couple of photos of Halifax harbour. First, a view of Halifax on the right, with Dartmouth on the left, (tiny) Georges Island in the centre, and McNabs Island in the distance. I took that one on a ferry ride in the spring. The second is a view of Georges Island (in the foreground) from Halifax, taken a couple of weeks ago.

If you’re interested in the celebration of “Jane Austen in the Public Gardens” in Halifax on August 17th, rsvp on our Facebook event page. All are welcome!

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

Save the date for a celebration of Jane Austen in the Public Gardens, August 17th

“She changed my life”: Andrew Davies pays tribute to Jane Austen (includes three tributes for “Unexpectedly Austen,” from Paul Gordon and Gay Mohrbacher as well as Davies)

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.

Please join the Friends of the Halifax Public Gardens and members of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Nova Scotia Region for an afternoon of readings from Jane Austen’s work, including passages from Pride and Prejudice and other novels.

Jane Austen in the Public Gardens
A 250th Birthday Celebration

Sunday, August 17th, 4:30 p.m.
Halifax Public Gardens

We’ll meet near the bandstand. In the photo above, you may be able to see the rows of benches for the audience, between the café (on the far left) and the bandstand (in the centre).

RSVP on the Facebook event page for Jane Austen in the Public Gardens.

I’m excited to be the MC for this event. Readers include Janet Brush, Charlene Carr, Sheree Fitch, Darcy Johns, Sheila Johnson Kindred, Hugh Kindred, Stephens Gerard Malone, Jan Parker, Anne Thompson, Carole Thompson, and the Rev’d Canon Dr. Paul Friesen, Rector of St. Paul’s Church. Adria Jackson, harpist, will provide music from Austen’s time.

His Honour, the Honourable Mike Savage, Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia and Patron of the Friends of the Public Gardens, has sent a message on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, “one of the most celebrated and enduring literary figures of all time”:

Jane Austen’s legacy lives on not only in the pages of her novels but also through her family’s unique connection to Nova Scotia. Her brothers, Charles John Austen and Francis Austen, served as Captain of the North Atlantic Station in Halifax and Commander-in-Chief, respectively, during the early 19th century. Her niece, Cassy Austen, was baptized at St. Paul’s Church in 1809, and her nephew was married there forty years later. It is intriguing to consider how Jane Austen’s letters and conversations with her brother Charles may have influenced her work—particularly characters and scenes in the novel Persuasion.

His Honour writes that “As we celebrate Jane Austen’s life and literary achievements, we recognize the enduring power of literature to transcend time and place. Her novels remain as relevant as ever, offering insight into human nature, social customs, and the strength of character.”

Here’s hoping for a lovely sunny afternoon on August 17th. If it rains, we’ll reschedule for a later date.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

“She changed my life”: Andrew Davies pays tribute to Jane Austen (includes three tributes for “Unexpectedly Austen,” from Paul Gordon and Gay Mohrbacher as well as Davies)

Celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday at St. Paul’s Church, Halifax

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.

“I have a particular reason for feeling grateful to Jane Austen,” says screenwriter Andrew Davies, who has adapted Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Sanditon for television, and Pride and Prejudice and Emma for the stage. Quite simply, he writes, “She changed my life.” In the tribute he wrote for “Unexpectedly Austen,” the series Liz Philosophos Cooper and I are co-editing for the Jane Austen Society of North America in honour of Austen’s 250th birthday, Davies adds that he is “currently having a sniff around The Watsons.”

Our June installment of “Unexpectedly Austen” also includes two more tributes written specifically for this series, from Paul Gordon and Gay Mohrbacher. Gordon writes that when he was creating a musical version of Emma, he felt it was a “secret collaboration with the author herself.” Mohrbacher speaks of how much she and her colleagues at PBS have enjoyed bringing adaptations of Austen’s novels to the small screen: “Bonnets off to Jane!”

You can read these tributes in full, along with all the other installments in the series, on the “Unexpectedly Austen” page on the JASNA website.

I’m excited about this year’s JASNA AGM in Baltimore, “Austen at 250: ‘No check to my Genius from beginning to end,’” October 10-12, 2025. (Registration for the AGM opened yesterday, and I believe it is already full, though there is a waitlist.) I’m looking forward to hearing talks by many Austen scholars, including contributors to the blog series celebrations of Austen’s novels that I’ve hosted here over the past several years (Devoney Looser, Collins Hemingway, Kim Wilson, Elaine Bander, Susan Allen Ford, Hazel Jones, Theresa Kenney, and Nili Olay).

At the AGM, I’ll be speaking about “Books as Children,” providing an overview of the tradition of connecting the creation of art with the creation of human life and analyzing Austen’s references to P&P and S&S as her “children” in the context of her development as a writer, her experiences with publication, and her relationships with family members—especially her sisters-in-law, who experienced the risks and challenges of motherhood as well as its joys.

Jane Austen referred to Pride and Prejudice as her “own darling Child” and said of Sense and Sensibility that she could “no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child”

Those of you who are L.M. Montgomery fans will, I think, be interested to know that Nili Olay will be speaking at the AGM about “Austen at 250 and Montgomery at 150: A Century Apart and Still Going Strong.” You may recall that Nili wrote about her experience of “Discovering Anne of Green Gables in Tel Aviv” for my LMM series last fall.

I’ll end today’s post with photos from the Garden Party at Government House in Halifax, an annual event that is free and open to the public. This year it was held on June 18th, and the theme was a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the National Flag of Canada.

If I had known my friends from JASNA were going to be at the Lieutenant Governor’s Garden Party, I would have worn my Regency gown . . .

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

Celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday at St. Paul’s Church, Halifax

From Alton to Chawton (photos taken on a walk from the train station in Alton to Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton)

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.

The Jane Austen Birthday Tea at St. Paul’s last Saturday was delightful. Many people attended in period costume, we heard lots of compliments about the event, the music, and the food, and I enjoyed talking about the connections between the Austen family and St. Paul’s. It was fun to introduce several members of the parish, who took on the roles of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Captain Wentworth, and other Austen characters and read brief excerpts from the novels.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bennet” with their son and his family (and me)

Siblings Tessa and Sean Sneddon provided music during the Tea

Many thanks to Margaret Bateman Ellison (pictured here with her husband), who organized the Jane Austen Tea and the other 275th anniversary weekend events, and to all the volunteers who contributed to this wonderful celebration.

The Open House earlier in the day on Saturday included tables with information about the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), the Titanic Society of Atlantic Canada (and connections between St. Paul’s and Titanic), and the role played by St. Paul’s in the relief efforts after the Halifax Explosion. We also had a book table for St. Paul’s Church at 275 and my book St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade. Some of the other tables featured information about the Old Burying Ground Foundation, St. Paul’s Home, and the oldest Sunday School in Canada, along with a variety of outreach programs such as the weekly Rector’s Lunch.

JASNA table

Titanic Society of Atlantic Canada table

One of the many people who came to the Open House was my grade five teacher, Betty McOnie, who encouraged and inspired me to write when I was ten and continues to do so now. I feel very fortunate to have had Mrs. McOnie as a teacher and to have reconnected with her in recent years.

Mrs. McOnie and me

Two of the events from the 275th anniversary weekend at St. Paul’s are available to watch on YouTube:

A Sunday service with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which our ancestors would have used when St. Paul’s opened for worship in 1750.

A Friday evening event with music and reflections on the history of the beautiful stained glass windows at St. Paul’s.

Two more photos for today: the first is of me with Adriel Driver, who played the role of Lady Catherine, and the second is of four of us from JASNA’s Nova Scotia Region. In all the years I’ve been a member of JASNA (more than a quarter of a century), I had never worn period costume—but this was the day for the new Regency gown I bought at the JASNA AGM last fall, and I was very happy with it!

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

From Alton to Chawton (photos taken on a walk from the train station in Alton to Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton)

St. Paul’s Church Open House and Jane Austen Birthday Tea

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.

When we were in England earlier in the spring, my daughter and I walked to Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton from the Alton train station, following directions posted on the JAHM website.

I thought I’d share with you just a few of the landmarks we passed:

The Crown Hotel, which was owned by Jane’s brother Edward

Henry Austen’s bank

The Butts, historically the boundary between Alton and Chawton; site of archery practice

Chawton

Prowtings, home of the Prowting family, who are mentioned several times in Jane Austen’s letters

In my novel The Austens, Jane and members of her family often walk between Chawton and Alton, and I enjoyed retracing their steps after having spent so much time on these roads and paths in my imagination while writing the book.

I shared photos of our day at Jane Austen’s House Museum here, and I’ll share some photos from our visit to Chawton House in a future post.

On a different topic: I’m delighted with the current window display at Bookmark II on Spring Garden Road in Halifax. It features the new book St. Paul’s Church at 275, with essays by Alison Kitt-Grainger and Aidan Ingalls, and the very old book St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade written by me way back in 1999. Thank you to the staff for putting together this beautiful display in honour of the 275th anniversary celebrations this weekend at St. Paul’s.

I believe there are still tickets ($25 each) available for the Jane Austen 250th Birthday Tea, with sittings at 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Tickets are available from the parish office. I’m organizing and hosting a short program of readings from Austen’s novels, and I think the event will be fun.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, all are welcome to attend the weekend events, all of which are free with the exception of the Tea. More information on the poster below or on the church’s website.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

St. Paul’s Church Open House and Jane Austen Birthday Tea

Natalie Jenner on Jane Austen as a source of “sustenance, resilience, and hope”

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.

St. Paul’s, the oldest building in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the oldest existing Anglican place of worship in Canada, is hosting several events on the June 6 – 8 weekend to celebrate the church’s 275th anniversary, including a Jane Austen Tea on Saturday, June 7th.

All are welcome to attend the celebrations, and most of the events are free. Tickets for the Jane Austen Tea are $25 and can be booked through the parish office. There will be two sittings, one at 2:00 p.m. and one at 4:00 p.m. Attending in period costume is encouraged (but not required). More details are available on the St. Paul’s website and the poster below.

I think it’s wonderful that these significant anniversaries overlap. St. Paul’s started celebrating in 2024, the 275th anniversary of the date the parish was founded, and the celebrations are continuing in 2025, the 275th anniversary of the date the building opened. Jane Austen’s 250th birthday is on December 16, 2025, and readers and fans around the world are celebrating throughout this anniversary year.

Regular readers will have heard me talk about the connections between Jane Austen and this historic church on more than one occasion! Austen’s niece Cassy Austen was baptized at St. Paul’s in 1809, and her nephew Charles John Austen, Jr., was married there in 1848. (Read more about the Austen family’s connections with Halifax, Nova Scotia here.)

At the Jane Austen Tea on June 7th, music will be provided by members of the parish. I’ll speak about the Austen connection with the church and introduce readers who’ll share passages from Austen’s works.

Please join us for tea and a joyful birthday party!

(I took this photo of roses in front of St. Paul’s last November.)

The Open House, earlier in the day on Saturday, June 7th (between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.), will include guided tours and information tables hosted by several groups, including the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Nova Scotia Region and the Titanic Society of Atlantic Canada. Also on offer is a video presentation by The Rev’d Dr. Raymond Aldred, Director of the Indigenous Studies Program at the Vancouver School of Theology, who spoke at St. Paul’s last year. The video is entitled “Indigenizing Canada: Reconciliation as a Journey and Destination.”

Other events include an evening of reflections on the history of the stained glass windows at St. Paul’s, on Friday, June 6th at 7:00 p.m., and a 1662 Book of Common Prayer service on Sunday, June 8th at 10:00 a.m.

Detail of the oldest stained glass window at St. Paul’s Church, installed in 1872

I photographed the famous Halifax Explosion Window in the gallery of St. Paul’s last fall, when I was preparing a slideshow for my talk at Government House, and I recently helped produce a postcard featuring this image. As a result of the explosion on December 6, 1917, the window broke in this unusual shape. Many ghost stories have been told about it over the years because it resembles the profile of a person. The broken glass was preserved between two new panes of glass, and the window continues to fascinate visitors to the church.

Come and learn about the rich and complex history of this remarkable place!

Some of you might also be interested to watch this interview I did last week for “The Author Journey,” hosted by Anne Louise O’Connell. We had a fun conversation, in which Anne asked me questions about my book St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s 250th, and other topics.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

Natalie Jenner on Jane Austen as a source of “sustenance, resilience, and hope”

My debut novel, The Austens

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.

“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.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

My debut novel, The Austens

“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.

I’m thrilled to share the news that my novel The Austens will be published by Pottersfield Press this fall! I hope very much that you’ll enjoy reading it.

In my novel, Jane Austen chooses art and the freedom to write fiction instead of marrying for money and thereby selling her body and soul, while her sister-in-law Fanny chooses to marry for love. Their disagreements about work and family threaten their friendship in a world that is hostile to art and love, and even the idea of a woman making a choice.

I’ve received some wonderful endorsements for The Austens, for which I am deeply grateful. I’ll share them here with you over the coming months. I’m also excited to share the beautiful cover of the novel, along with information about the launch and other readings and events.

In Bermuda one young woman chooses love and suffers relentless child-bearing; in England her sister-in-law opts for authorship within a female household. In this powerful reimagining of the stories of Fanny Palmer and Jane Austen, Sarah Emsley creates a rich and poignant context for the six novels—a context that lets us see what Austen reveals of women’s lives—and how much she omits.
– Janet Todd, author of Living with Jane Austen and Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden

Sarah Emsley is a gifted writer who brings her witty Jane Austen to such vibrant life, you will feel as though you are hearing the famous author’s actual thoughts and reading her real journals and letters. … Brimming with intelligence, empathy, and pathos, The Austens will linger in your mind long after you have turned the last page.
– Syrie James, international bestselling author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, and Jane Austen’s First Love

Pottersfield Press has published books by many writers I admire, including Brian Bartlett, George Elliott Clarke, Sheree Fitch, Steven Laffoley, Frank MacDonald, Marjorie Simmins, Jon Tattrie, Margo Wheaton, and Budge Wilson, and it will be an honour to see my book alongside theirs. I’m pleased that this novel, which was inspired by Jane Austen’s connection with my hometown of Halifax, will be published right here in Nova Scotia.

When the book is available for pre-order, I’ll share the details here so you’re the first to know. Pre-orders make such a difference because they give the publisher an indication of how much interest there is in the book. If you’re thinking you’ll buy The Austens at some point, I do hope you’ll consider ordering in advance.

I’m planning a big party here in Halifax for the launch of The Austens, and all are welcome. I hope many of you will come and celebrate with me—more on that soon! For now, please save the date and time: October 21st at 7pm.

I took this photo of Government House, Halifax, last fall. Fanny Austen and her husband Charles danced at a ball at Government House in 1810—and I’ve brought that evening to life in a scene in my novel. Can’t wait to share it with you!

If you’re on social media, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky Social, LinkedIn, Goodreads, and Pinterest.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up.

Subscribe

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)

A Poem Every Morning

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.