Reading Austen in America

Reading Austen in America presents a colorful, compelling account of how an appreciative audience for Austens novels originated and developed in America, and how American readers contributed to the rise of Austens international fame. Drawing on a range of sources that have never before come to light, Juliette Wells solves the long-standing bibliographical mystery of how and why the first Austen novel printed in Americathe 1816 Philadelphia Emmacame to be. She reveals the responses of this books varied readers and creates an extended portrait of one: Christian, Countess of Dalhousie, a Scotswoman living in British North America. Through original archival research, Wells establishes the significance to reception history of two transatlantic friendships: the first between ardent Austen enthusiasts in Boston and members of Austens family in the nineteenth century, and the second between an Austen collector in Baltimore and an aspiring bibliographer in England in the twentieth.