THE HISTORY OF "THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY"

   It all began quite quietly and simply -as the nice things in this world usually do- about sixty years ago, in 1940, to be precise. Dorothy Darnell had the bright idea and it caught on. It has today about twelve branches and close on two thousand members.

   Then, in 1975, Canadian-born Joan Austen-Leigh, great-great-great-niece of the novelist, met Jack Grey of New York, a fellow Janeite, at Chawton, and they decided to launch JASNA, the Jane Austen Society  of North America, covering the U.S.A. and Canada. JASNA has today between four and five thousand members.

   JASNA gave birth to JASA, the Jane Austen Society of Australia, with independent centres at Sidney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Nora Walker founded JASA in about 1990. They have today about four hundred and fifty members.(...)

Now about ourselves.

    We were the first (...) Jane Austen Society in South America. Be proud of the fact, keep the home fires burning, organize your events, publish your proceedings, make our Centre as good as any other. But we have no money, you cry. Yes, you have. It’s in your own pockets and purses.

I founded The Buenos Aires or B.A. Jane Austen Society on August 26^th, 1997, at 2934 Güemes Street, and the Act of Foundation hangs framed in my room at 2932 Güemes Street for anyone to see. In other words, we have been going, in existence for just over three years. In that short space of time we have re-read the six famous novels, read the three unfinished ones, and viewed the superb B.B.C. videograms. No mean achievement! I doubt whether as much has been done in so short a space of time by any other Jane Austen Society anywhere else in the world.

   This sounds like blowing your own trumpet, which you are not supposed to do in polite society. But, as I always say, if you don’t, who else will? Perhaps, though, we shouldn’t crow too loud or think we’re the cat’s whiskers. Let us remember that Jane Austen herself, in the seven years she lived at Chawton, revised her first three novels and wrote another three. All in the parlour of the little house at Chawton, with all the interruptions you can imagine because she was a housekeeper as well as a writer, on a little rectangular writing-desk (inherited by Joan Austen-Leigh and presented by her to the British Library) with a quill pen and ink and in longhand. No shorthand for her, or secretaries, fountain or ballpoint pens or biromes, or copying agencies, or computers or any of the gadgets we pampered children of the Technological Revolution resort to!

    Patrick  Dudgeon M.A. (Cantab.)