VIRTUAL: Jane Austen’s Sanditon: From Unfinished Swan Song to British Costume Drama
Commemorating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday on Dec. 16, 2025, join author, former UK resident, and Anglophile Claire Evans for a look at Austen’s final, unfinished manuscript and its path from family heirloom to a fully imagined costume drama, airing on American PBS. Learn about the real-life people and locations that informed Austen’s last work before her untimely death at age 41, as well as how the seeds of her ideas came to life on the small screen.
Claire Evans is an author, former journalist, attorney, and college lecturer who started her love of most things British as she and her mother watched countless Britcoms on PBS. She studied abroad in London and, against the odds, she married a Brit she met in Peoria, Illinois. They lived in England for a number of years. Her business, Tea with Claire, grew from friends asking for travel advice. Her memoir, High Tea and the Low Down, is the true story of what it's really like to marry a witty Englishman, move to Britain, and make every cultural faux pas imaginable.
Jane Austen’s last manuscript, given to King’s College Cambridge by her great niece in 1930. Courtesy BBC.
- Date:
- Wednesday, December 10, 2025
- Time:
- 1:00pm - 2:00pm
- Location:
- Online - Zoom (AAdams)
- Audience:
- Adult
- Categories:
- Online Program Adult > Literature & Learning
- Online:
- For online registrations: Event URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tKHGLdthQVai1aoPvy8UpA