Book Talk: Jane Austen's Transatlantic Family at Home on HMS Namur

Chatham Historic Dockyard, Church Lane, Chatham, Kent
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Free admission | Registration required 

Join Sheila Johnson Kindred, author of Jane Austen's Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen, for a talk in Chatham Historic Dockyard. The event will be held on the Mess Deck via the Visitor Entrance. 

In Jane Austen's Transatlantic Sister, Fanny's articulate and informative letters - transcribed in full for the first time and situated in their meticulously researched historical context - disclose her quest for personal identity and autonomy, her maturation as a wife and mother, and the domestic, cultural, and social milieu she inhabited. Sheila Johnson Kindred also investigates how Fanny was a source of naval knowledge for Jane, and how much she was an inspiration for Austen's literary invention, especially for the female naval characters in Persuasion. Although she died young, Fanny's story is a compelling record of female naval life that contributes significantly to our limited knowledge of women's roles in the Napoleonic Wars.

Sheila Johnson Kindred taught in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Mary's University. She writes about Jane Austen's fiction and family, and lives in Halifax.