Canadian author Marisa Hopp shares with us what it might be like if Jane Austen visited her for a day. Jane and I would head out to a popular Ottawa restaurant, housed in an old bank, so she could marvel at the vaulted ceilings and soft light. Perhaps it would be to scale of some of the ballrooms she conjures in her novels. Sitting at the room-length bar, we would both order a gin and tonic and laugh over the coincidence. The British gin craze would have been over by Jane’s d

In Cocktails with Miss Austen, Victoria Kellaway wonders what her place might have been in a Jane Austen household and celebrates how much society has evolved since Jane’s time. We caught up with the co-author of the best-selling Colombia a comedy of errors to find out what might happen if Jane Austen landed in modern day Bogotá. Bogotá is an enormous South American capital that might seem a huge culture shock for Jane at first, but she’d be more at home than she would initia

Cocktails with Miss Austen author Imogen Armstrong Orr imagines sharing a drink with Jane Austen in the the gardens of Kellynch Hall, in the days before a retrenchment ever needed to be considered. I would have a Sidecar, Imogen says, tart, smooth and strong. Jane would have a Gimlet, not flashy like a martini, but still with some good British gin and, in the company of Jane, our drinks would come with a twist of acerbic wit! We would talk of everything from good walks, good

In Cocktails with Miss Austen, Hong Kong author Ophelia Tung writes about how Jane Austen taught her to find the heroine within (and why that doesn’t always mean being an Elizabeth). We caught up with her to find out what she’d do if she could share a cocktail with Jane Austen. Cam I have a slumber party with Jane? Instead of a cocktail, I would have a cup of tea because I need to stay sober to savour every moment with my idol. But I would give Jane a glass of champagne. We w

Jane and I would both have Sanpellegrino prickly pear & orange sodas by the pool, as any other place in Phoenix is barely tolerable by mid-March. She would say of Arizona (à la Miss Crawford), "I do not like my situation: this place is too hot for me." Naturally, we'd gossip shamelessly about all the Lydias (and Lady Susans, for that matter) I have known and loved in almost 20 years of public education, and have a giggle over Britain's Jane Austen banknote and its un-ironic u

People think of self-publishing as a phenomenon of the digital age, but Jane Austen was blazing a trail as an indie author over 200 years ago. In fact, three of the four books published during her lifetime were self-published. Her books have inspired millions but the stories behind the work and her journey to publication are just as inspirational. She persevered, no matter how long it took Jane had incredible staying power. She didn’t give up—even though it would be nearly tw

In Cocktails with Miss Austen, Alabama-born author Luisa Kay Reyes talks about learning to speak with Jane Austen's eloquence in the hall-ways of her middle school in the vanishing Amish farmlands of Northeast Ohio. We sat down with her to find out what might happen if Jane visited her in the Old South. I would love to introduce Jane to Southern culture. Of course, in the Southern part of the US, we've had many fine novelists writing about Old South culture - Margaret Mitche

In Cocktails with Miss Austen, writer Elizabeth Davis talks about having "Jane on the brain" as she guides a spirited group of young American students through the works of Jane Austen and E.M. Forster (someone else who had Jane on the brain) during an eventful summer term in England. After many weeks supervising her young charges (sometimes with much hilarity), Ms. Davis would no doubt enjoy a few quiet moments to share a cocktail with Miss Austen. But what would the two talk

Austen gives female relationships centre stage in many of her novels, as the women struggle to achieve the social and financial stability of marriage in a society that denied them true independence. And it is the friendship between sisters that stands out the most. There is a very good reason for that. In real life Jane was very close to her sister Cassandra. Many Janeites, when they get in a scrape, like to ask ‘what would Jane do?’—but the better question might be ‘what wou

Cocktails with Miss Austen co-author Frances Duncan describes her day out with Jane in Wellington, New Zealand. We’d spend the day either at the beach, probably in Kapiti, or we’d take walk in the bush to enjoy the native greenery, perhaps at Zelandia where she could hear the native birds. After a day in nature, I’d take Jane to the Library Bar in Wellington so we could be surrounded by books, sip cocktails, and gossip like old friends. I'd try to convince her to get Lower Hu