A conversation with Joan Klingel Ray
Joan Klingel Ray, Ph.D., is in her third term as President of the Jane Austen Society of North America, a title she will hold until December 2006. A native of New York City, she is a professor of English and a President’s Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Dr. Ray is the author of Jane Austen for Dummies, recently published by Wiley. The Editrix had the good fortune to meet Dr. Ray when she gave a (wonderful) presentation at the Editrix’s JASNA region last March, and she graciously agreed to put up with our Lady Catherine-like impertinence do an e-mail interview.
Getting to Know You
When and under what circumstances did you first read Jane Austen’s novels?
Like many an Austen reader, I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was about 13. I was at summer camp and loved the book at first read. I’ve re-read it many times. Pride and Prejudice is the most approachable of Austen’s novels in terms of its wonderful plot, hero, and heroine, and wondering if they will ever get together. But I did not read all of Austen’s works until I was in a grad course that lasted two semesters and included all the novels of JA. I think this was a great time to read them as I was then 22 and had developed a strong sense of irony, myself. Not that younger readers don’t read and appreciate Austen’s novels. But the older and more experienced in life and literature one becomes, the more one appreciates the full Austen–really a very sophisticated writer. (more…)
