Feb. 26, 2003

Contact: Marjorie Swann, Department of English, (785) 864-2570.

Jane Austen descendant, noted author to give lecture at KU on forthcoming book

LAWRENCE -- A descendant of Jane Austen who is an award-winning author in his own right will give a sneak preview of his upcoming book on Austen in a lecture at the University of Kansas next month.

Richard Jenkyns, professor of the classical tradition at Oxford University, will speak on "A Park with a View: Jane Austen's Mansfield" at 4 p.m. Monday, March 10, in the Centennial Room at the Kansas Union. Jenkyns is Austen's great-great-great-great nephew.

This lecture, sponsored by the KU Department of English, is free and open to the public.

Austen lived from 1775 to 1817. Her novels -- notably "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Emma" and "Persuasion" -- are highly prized not only for their light irony, humor and depiction of English country life but also for their underlying serious qualities.

Jenkyns is a visiting professor at Boston University this year. He publishes in scholarly and popular journals and reviews, such as the Times, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. His book "The Victorians and Ancient Greece" won the Arts Council National Book Award for Creative Non-Fiction. Other books include "Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus and Juvenal," "Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance" and "Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil." He also edited and contributed to "The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal" and its Spanish translation, "El Legado de Roma: una nueva valoraci—n," and "Virgil's Experience: Nature and History; Times, Names and Places."