To the Editors:

October 5, 1979, marked the first meeting of The Jane Austen Society of North America. The combined meeting, cocktail party, and dinner took place at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City. Guest lecturers were Professor A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, and Professor Donald Greene, University of Southern California.

The raison d’être of The Society is best expressed in the following excerpt from its Constitution.

To provide a meeting place for persons of literary and cultural interests where the life, works, critical essays, and biographical studies; and matters dealing with the social, political, economic and artistic background of the Jane Austen period, might be dealt with from time to time.

The Society, which at this time has a membership of almost five hundred (in the six months since its inception!), welcomes both institutional and individual members. A check in the amount of $5, payable to “The Jane Austen Society of North America” and mailed to J. David Grey, President, 400 West 43rd Street, Apartment 44-M, New York, NY 10036, will secure membership through December 16, 1980 (Jane Austen’s birthday).

An annual newsletter, Persuasion: The Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America, will be published and the first issue (dated December 16, 1979) will be mailed to all members who send an additional $2. (The above-mentioned membership fee will cover the 1980 issue.)

Rosalind Van Praag

Secretary

The Jane Austen Society of North America

This Issue

March 6, 1980