Book Launch: The Novel Life of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas

Janine Barchas launches her latest book The Novel Life of Jane Austen (2025) with a conversation moderated by author Edward Carey. Book sales, a signing, and a reception will follow the conversation.

About Janine Barchas

Born in the Netherlands, Janine Barchas joined The University of Texas at Austin in 2002, after teaching at the University of Auckland in New Zealand for five years.

Her first book, Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2003), won the SHARP prize for best work in the field of book history. This was followed by Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity (2012). The Lost Books of Jane Austen (2019) investigated the famous author's early reception history through the lens of her cheapest, least authoritative, and most neglected reprintings. She describes that project as "hard-core bibliography meets the Antiques Roadshow."

In 2019, Barchas curated the “Austen in Austin” exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, gathering together all their copies of Jane Austen's works to ask how the holding of a single author might reveal the prides and prejudices of book collecting. Labels explained how the Ransom Center acquired its first editions, unique family and association copies, and other Janeite items. “Austen in Austin” extended the argument made in Lost Books by showing how only certain categories of books find a safe haven at scholarly libraries.

Please have your reservation confirmation ready upon entering. A reservation does not guarantee a seat. Line forms upon arrival of the first patron, and doors open 30 minutes in advance. Doors to our theater will open approximately 30 minutes before the event begins. No food or beverages are allowed inside our theater or gallery space.

Host or Publisher Harry Ransom Center