Juliette Wells (Goucher College, Baltimore):
Only one of Jane Austen’s novels appeared in an American edition during her lifetime (1775-1817): Emma, reprinted in 1816 by the prominent Philadelphia publisher Mathew Carey. Until now, virtually nothing has been known about how this edition came to be, who read it, or why so few copies—only six—remain today. Drawing on the Carey archives and on a study of the surviving copies, two of which she rediscovered, Juliette Wells illuminates American readers’ first encounters with Austen.
