2025 Rendell Lecture: "Jane Austen on the Cheap"

The 2025 Kenneth W. Rendell Endowed Lecture by Janine Barchas

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸:
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, cheap and shoddy reprintings of Jane Austen’s novels performed the heavy lifting of bringing her work and reputation before the general public. Inexpensive reprints and early paperbacks of Austen were sold at Victorian railway stations for one or two shillings, traded for soap wrappers, awarded as book prizes in schools, and targeted to Britain’s working classes. At just pennies a copy, Austen’s novels were also squeezed into tight columns on thin paper. Few of these hard-lived books survive. Yet such scrappy everyday versions of her novels made a substantial difference to Austen’s early readership. These were the books bought and read by ordinary people. And these are the books that, owing to their low status and production values, remain uncollected by academic libraries and largely unremarked by scholars. About 15 years ago, Janine Barchas began hunting for these lost books of Jane Austen. This is the story of how private collectors, eBay, and some lucky breaks came to the rescue.

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿:
Janine Barchas is Chancellor's Council Centennial Professor in the Book Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. In 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯 (2019), she championed the importance of humble and error-filled reprintings to reception history. What a 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 reviewer termed her “smart detective work” owes much, Barchas admits, to her student days at Rare Book School. In addition to curating public exhibitions for the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Harry Ransom Center, and Jane Austen’s House Museum, Barchas is also the creator of the e-gallery, “What Jane Saw” (www.whatjanesaw.org), a digital heritage project that reconstructs two popular art spectacles witnessed by Austen in 1796 and 1813. Barchas’s most recent book is a graphic novel, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯, 𝘈 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘉𝘪𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺 (2025), with London-based illustrator Isabel Greenberg.