An A-Z Guide to Jane Austen's World is ready to be pre-ordered on Amazon and elsewhere. It has been beautifully illustrated by Harriet Wu and will make a nice Christmas present for Janeites. I hope you will enjoy it!

 

I have been delighted by the press coverage of Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, which came out in 2024. It was favorably reviewed internationally, with a full-page review in the (London) Sunday Times, nearly a full page in the Wall Street Journal, reviews in Publishers Weekly and the New Yorker, and many other outlets. A slightly revised paperback edition is forthcoming in October 2026. It looks at Austen's relationship to the marriage plot both in her time and in the current popular imagination.

 

Recently, I've poured considerable research, time, and energy into a digital and public humanities projects called Jane Austen's Desk. (Read more in the Digital Humanities section.)

 

One of my recurring interests is sentimentalism and sensibility as a cross-cultural movement in Europe. I've made similar studies of intellectual history and literature in Meiji Japan, focusing on the author Natsume Sôseki.

My interest in the intersection of philosophy, film, and fiction has taken me to a book-length manuscript on Cowboys and Samurai: Authority, Nation-Making, and Individualism, and well as to many studies of Austen adaptations.