Caroline Jane Knight, fifth great-niece of Jane Austen, joined us on 25 February 2023 to give an entertaining and extremely informative talk about growing up at Chawton House and her famous relatives legacy including Caroline’s foundation ‘The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation’.

Jewellery historian Adrian Dickens joined us on 1 October 2023 to discuss jewels of the Regency era, as well as the three pieces (that are known of) relating to Jane Austen.

On 13 August 2022, Tim Bullamore, an award-winning obituary writer best known to JASA members until recently as publisher and editor of Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, gave an entertaining presentation of how her obituary might appear in The Times of London today.

As part of our 20th Anniversary celebrations, JASA Brisbane members attended a tour of Government House in Brisbane, home of the Governor of Queensland.

On 19 February 2022, Dr Victoria Bladen from University of Queensland gave a presentation on adaptations of ‘Pride and Prejudice’.

On 9 October 2021, Kate Ferrett gave a presentation on Regency costume and particularly the costumes in the 2020 film Emma.

On Saturday 8 February 2020, over 70 JASA Brisbane members came together for the first meeting of the year to hear a wonderful presentation by Walter Mason on The Zen of Jane.

Walter's talk was greatly enjoyed by all present showing the links between the tenets of Buddhism and Jane's work as well as providing us with some wonderfully entertaining anecdotes along the way.

Susannah Fullerton (President, JASA) enjoys a cup of tea after presenting her talk ‘Bad Mr Wickham!’ on 2 November 2019. After her busy few weeks, and presenting a wonderfully entertaining talk, we think she’s earned it.

On 14 September 2019, the JASA Brisbane group met to listen to a talk about one of Jane’s lesser known works Lady Susan presented by Margi Abraham. Following the talk, we were challenged with a very tricky quiz about the malevolent misses in Austen’s novels.

To burn or not to burn? Should Jane's sister Cassandra have burnt so many of Jane's letters? Attendees at the JASA Brisbane meeting on 6 July 2019 were invited to listen to a debate with opposing arguments presented by Olivia Williamson (left) and Elise Gane.

Despite a rainy day, over 50 people met for July's JASA Brisbane meeting where the focus was on The Letters of Jane Austen. The group was joined by New Zealand's Ruth Williamson, Editor of the JASA Chronicle who provided an informative presentation on Jane Austen's letters and their history from private family correspondence to the publication of the remaining letters while attempting to answer the question: Should Cassandra have burnt so many of Jane's letters?

JASA Brisbane is fortunate to have Sandra (and occasionally Andrew) join us for our regular meetings in Regency Dress. Sandra makes the beautiful outfits she wears and we look forward to sharing more of them over the coming months.

JASA Brisbane was entertained by two of our members Narelle and Jami who presented a selection of the letters of Jane Austen (put together by Barbara). Our next meeting in July will be our annual study day which will be focusing on Jane's letters and this was a great reminder to start reading!