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Goodbye!

In this video, Gillian and Kim conclude the course Jane Austen: myth, reality and global celebrity.
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Gillian Dow: Welcome, everyone, to Avenue campus at the University of Southampton. And to a fond farewell from both of us. Jane Austen has one thing to say about Southampton in her fiction. It comes in her juvenilia, Love and Friendship, “beware the stinking fish of Southampton.” But actually we know that she enjoyed living here in the city, which was a thriving regency spa while she was here. She wrote to her sister Cassandra in 1807 that she thought she would prefer it to Canterbury.
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Kim Simpson: So we hope that you’ve really enjoyed coming on this journey with us and learning with us a little bit about this figure who made it to a global celebrity.
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Gillian Dow: And we hope, mainly, that you will come and join us at the University of Southampton. Many of us research and teach Austen’s life and times here. And we’d love to welcome you. But I suppose my main hope at the end of this course, is something to do with what we’ve not been doing. What we haven’t done a great deal of in this course, as we’ve looked at influences on Jane Austen, on her reception, on her global reputation, is the writing itself. We haven’t done close readings of her works. We haven’t done any kind of analysis.
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So what our main hope is for this end of the course that it’s going to have sent you racing back to those novels.

We hope that you have enjoyed this course.

We would like to remind you that we will not be providing facilitation in the comments and discussions after Sunday 12th July.

Thank you from all of the Jane Austen course team!

Course design and creation:

This course was designed by Dr. Gillian Dow, Dr. Kim Simpson and Kate Borthwick, with contributions from Dr Stephen Bending, Dr Darren Bevin, Professor Jeanice Brooks, Amy Clarke, Professor Emma Clery, Dr. Shelley Cobb, Alison Daniell, Dr. Mary Guyatt, Dr Stephanie Jones, Professor Nicky Marsh, Dr. Will May, Rebecca Smith.

You were supported by the University of Southampton’s online facilitation team:

Chrissie Metcalf (coordinator), Alison Daniell and Alastair Dawson.

This course was produced by:

Digital Learning at the University of Southampton: video production was by Joe Brett and Sofy Bazzini.

This course would not have been possible without the support of:

Special thanks for their contributions to the course go to:

  • Isabelle Bour, Professor of English Literature, La Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Le Divan Bookshop, Paris
  • Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Paris
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Jane Austen: Myth, Reality and Global Celebrity

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