Reading Austen in America by Juliette Wells

Reading Austen in America is an in-depth study of Jane Austen's earliest American readers. Author Juliette Wells focuses on the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Emma, the only edition of one of Austen's works to be published in the U.S. during her lifetime. Only six copies of this edition are known to exist today. Wells writes about the lives of the original owners of these copies, and their reactions to Austen's novels and characters. Later she discusses two transatlantic...