This project seeks to answer three questions:

First, what happens when we focus our reading and discussion of Austen’s work on her representations of the environment. Our definition of the environment includes air, wind, water, landscapes and grounds, and the more-than-human world (animals, plants, microbes, and more).

Second, what can reading Jane Austen in the midst of our present environmental crises teach us about the possibilities that literature opens up and closes off for our deep engagement with nature and the more-than-human?

Third, what kinds of conversations arise when social annotation invites members of diverse communities to read together?

This public collaborative reading project aims to bring Austen readers together to slowly wander through her novels, one chapter a week, using social annotation, and to engage our sense of wonder as we (re)discover Austen’s environments.