Austen and Us: Why read Jane Austen in 2026?

Anni Domingo, Tessa Hadley and Romola Garai in conversation with Professor Lara Feigel
6.30-8.00pm, Wed 21 January, Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, King’s College London, Strand campus WC2R 2LS

250 years after her birth, Austen continues to be beloved, ubiquitous but also oddly enigmatic. Here we bring together acclaimed novelist Tessa Hadley with actor-writers Anni Domingo (part of an innovative postcolonial reinterpretation of Mansfield Park by Watermill Theatre) and Romola Garai (star of the 2009 BBC Emma) to ask why Austen is so perpetually popular and what she has to say to us now. Is she primarily a storyteller, a satirist or a psychologist; someone who celebrates her world and its values or critiques them; and how do we mix celebrating her with critical perspectives? What are the dangers of a ‘heritage’ approach to Austen and how do we get beyond it, or explode it? Why do her novels work so well when transposed into other mediums despite seeming such consummate achievements of novelistic art? Who writing today is perpetuating – or furthering or transforming – her legacy or her agendas?

Can Austen help us figure out what the value of studying English is in the current world? The conversation is designed to help us answer this question, and half the seats at the event are reserved for sixth-formers studying A level English and considering coming to King’s College London.

booking is here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/kingsartshums/1917095