Wednesday 10th December 2025
Venue: Online
8pm GMT
Visit our digital living room for the fifth event for our Jane Austen Book Club, and the third Deirdre Le Faye memorial lecture.
The Improvement of the Mind by Extensive Reading: Hester Mulso Chapone, Jane Austen, and Pride and Prejudice
Susan Allen Ford
The characters in Pride and Prejudice are readers of conduct books. Most famously, Mr. Collins picks up James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women (1766) with which to instruct the Bennet sisters. Less obvious is the presence in the novel of Hester Mulso Chapone’s Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), a conduct book very different from Fordyce’s. This talk will examine Chapone’s serious examination of education and the ways it informs the conversations, characters, thematic texture, and structure of Pride and Prejudice.
About the Speaker
Susan Allen Ford has been Editor of JASNA’s journals Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line since 2006 and is Professor of English Emerita at Delta State University. She is also a board member of the Jane Austen Collective, for which she is involved in the Jane Austen Summer Program, the Jane Austen and Co. virtual lecture series, and the Jane Austen’s Desk project. Susan has published essays on Austen and her contemporaries, gothic and detective fiction, and Shakespeare. Her book, What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why), which explores how Austen creates readers through shared reading experiences, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2024.
Tickets: £6 | £50 season ticket to all JABC events onsite and online. For the full list, click here.
This is an online event. It takes place 8-9pm GMT. The cut off to purchase tickets is midnight on the day before the event. The Zoom link should be visible on your ticket, but ticket holders will be also emailed the Zoom link on the day of the event. If you do not receive joining details by midday (UK time) on the day of the event, please email info@chawtonhouse.org with your order number. The talks will be recorded and emailed out to those who cannot join synchronously within 7 days. Access to working internet is required. Please note this event will take place live.
What is the Jane Austen Book Club?
Jane Austen’s anniversary year has seen multiple books about her life and work published. Over the Autumn and Winter of 2025, we speak to some of the authors working on Austen—novelists, biographers, and graphic artists—about their love of Austen, the inspiration behind their work, and the fresh perspectives they bring to her world. Each session offers the chance to hear lively conversation, ask questions, and explore how Austen continues to spark joy and creativity today.