Our founder & chair, Caroline Jane Knight, reflects on the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation’s 8th year of connecting through literacy.

The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation was launched on 31st October 2014, the anniversary of the date Jane first became a published author, with the release of Sense & Sensibility in 1811. It wasn’t a coincidence. I knew we would be ready about that time of year, and it seemed fitting to honour the day, 203 years earlier, that had led to this.

My intention with the Foundation was to harness the growing global passion for Jane Austen and raise money to support literacy projects in developing communities. Growing up at Chawton House as Jane’s fifth great niece and talking to visitors all summer long in the tearoom Granny ran in the Great Hall of the house made Jane a significant part of my childhood, and I am honoured to have the opportunity to contribute to her legacy in the 21st century.

I often think big, but the Foundation has exceeded even my expectations. As I began to work with the Jane Austen book-loving and literacy communities, I could see there was so much more that we could do to support literacy, as well as raise money. The power of Jane Austen to attract people is extraordinary, and we are lucky to have hundreds of volunteers. With so many teachers, writers, passionate readers, and other professionals willing to give their time and skills, we now offer a rich calendar of annual literacy initiatives and fun events online and in-person, including a global writing competition with an exceptional and unique prize, Jane Austen Regency Week in the UK including our Jane Austen Picnic on the lawns of Chawton House, a fun online 30-Day Literacy Challenge in September, and our Jane Austen Tea for Literacy events hosted by supporters around the world from October to December.

As well as information about the Foundation and our literacy programs, our website offers a beautiful collection of exclusive bookplates, personalised with your name in Jane Austen’s handwriting, access to our Pride & Possibilities journal, with over 90 carefully curated articles written for the Foundation, and a dedicated page of Resources for Schools.

We have funded literacy programs in India, Ghana, Syria, for Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Our team of over 50 Literacy Mentors give their time to support children’s writing, our online literacy activities, and the resources we provide to schools. The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation has contributed to the literacy learning of thousands of children, helping them connect with the world around them.

We have also connected with each other and created a strong and passionate community of followers, volunteers, donors, and charity partners from 29 countries around the world. I have made lifelong friends— we all have, and it’s all thanks to Jane.  

We believe that literacy connects us to each other, to the world around us, and to a world of imagination and possibilities. The Foundation is run entirely by volunteers and 100% of donations is spent on literacy programs and activities.

The Foundation has been a labour of love for all of us, and I thank each and every one of you for coming with me on this adventure. Together we have created a literacy organisation and community to be proud of.

Here are my highlights from the last 12 months:

Jane Austen Tea for Literacy

People from around the world hosted their own Jane Austen Tea for Literacy parties between 31st October and 18th December 2021. Our downloadable party pack includes authentic recipes from Jane’s family cookbooks, literacy and word games, playlists, editable templates, a prize draw and reward for raising over $200. In 2021, we raised enough money for 55 children in the most impoverished areas of Delhi to participate in the WorldReader Read to Kids program in Anganwadi day care centres. Click here to read more about our work in India.

Great fun was had by all, cooking Jane Austen family recipes and hosting parties:

New in 2022! 

This year’s Jane Austen Tea for Literacy includes a choice of themes – you can use our beautiful classic theme, or our festive theme for parties held later in the year with Christmas recipes and activities. 

Click here for more information:

Christmas Entertainment from our Community

As a Christmas treat, we were delighted to share entertainment made by our community for our community in 2021:

• SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Performed by Salt House Creative with 8 actors and a door

• SANDITON SEASON 2: PARKER BROTHER’S BUILD THE BOARDWALK, filmed on Zoom during lockdowns

• JANE AUSTEN LITERACY FOUNDATION WRITING COMPETITION WINNING STORIES 2021, narrated by multi-award winning narrator, Alison Larkin

For more information about these productions and links to access, click below

Sanditon 2 – An interview with lead writer, Justin Young

This year we have celebrated fan-fiction and the continuation of Jane’s legacy by writers all over the world. Most notably in 2022, the second season based on Jane’s last work, the unfinished Sanditon, was released in February by PBS Masterpiece. We gave our community the chance to post their questions for Seasons 2 and 3 lead writer, Justin Young. I interviewed Justin via Zoom in March to ask about the writing and filming of the series and to ask the most pressing question from our community; why did Theo James leave and why the character Sidney Parker wasn’t recast. Click below to watch:

PBS LearningMedia

We were excited to learn about the Austen learning resources available free from PBS.. Clips of key scenes from some of MASTERPIECE’s most popular adaptations are available to stream on PBS LearningMedia, a free and trusted platform providing digital media resources for school teachers across all subjects. Teaching tips, activities, discussion questions, background essays, and author bios accompany the streaming videos.

In the MASTERPIECE Literary Drama Collection, you’ll find resources for book-based adaptations ranging from The Diary of Anne Frank to Great Expectations to Jane Eyre. The MASTERPIECE-produced versions of Austen’s Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Sanditon are also in the Collection.

Writing Competition and Jane Austen Regency Week

For this year’s short story writing competition, we made a change from our previous themes of ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Connection’ and chose ‘Inspired by Jane Austen’, leaving it open to writers to interpret the theme however they wished. We were thrilled with the standard of entries and our team of 18 volunteer judges, led by Jane MacKenzie, read every entry (each story was read and scored by multiple judges) to create a short list of ten. The final three winning stories were chosen by a special panel of judges including Susannah Harker (Jane Bennet, BBCTV P&P 1995), Helena Kelly (Oxford academic and author of Jane Austen, The Secret Radical) and Natalie Jenner (author of The Jane Austen Society and The Bloomsbury Girls). 

The three wining stories were then published on our website and read by the public to vote for the overall winner. At the end of June, we were thrilled to once again attend Jane Austen Regency Week in Chawton and Alton, an annual 9-day festival of which I am a Patron. Oh, what utter joy it was to meet in person again after 3 years, enjoy each other’s company, talk, laugh, raise some money, and have a jolly good time all round. 

The highlight of the week for me, was our Parade for Literacy and Jane Austen Regency Picnic, which I host with my parents in the grounds of Chawton House annually (pandemic aside).  

While we ate a delicious Regency inspired picnic made by the wonderful Chawton House kitchen, we were treated to a fascinating talk on fathers in Jane Austen’s novels by Helena Kelly, and with writing competition winners in attendance, our lead judge, Jane MacKenzie, announced the overall winner; The Boxed Set, by Sheila Walker. As a special treat for the winner, I had arranged for Susannah Harker to read the winning story – I had no idea when I made this arrangement that the winning story would be about the boxed set of BBC Televisions 1995 Pride & Prejudice. You could have heard a pin drop as our favourite Jane Bennet read aloud a beautifully written story about a man whose unexpected love of Jane Austen’s work had started with the very production she starred in. You can read more about Jane Austen Regency Week here, from foundation volunteer and manager of our Literacy Mentors, Monica Kauffman.

The winning stories were recorded as an audiobook by foundation Ambassador, Alison Larkin, and released worldwide later in the year for all to hear and enjoy.

Click below to read our winning stories for 2022 and register your interest in entering next year’s short story competition:

Resources for Schools

In this brand-new initiative, we aim to support busy teachers, schools, and educators by offering a library of easy to use literacy resources, providing inspiration and materials for fun and engaging activities in and out of the classroom with many resources available for free and immediate download. The Resources for Schools page on our website features initiatives from the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation and other organisations. We would like to expand the resources offered to schools via our website. Please email us at admin@janeaustenlf.org with recommendations of other literacy resources available online that could be added.

30 Day Literacy Challenge

This year’s challenge was based on Jane Austen’s characters. Each daily post throughout September featured a different character and a fun 15 minute challenge. This challenge will soon be added to our Resources for Schools page as a download for use in the classroom.

DAY 5 - Fill in the blanks

_A__IE_ __I__ which character is this from Jane Austen’s Emma?

Make your own 'fill in the blanks' puzzles (with either vowels or consonants missing) of literary characters from any author for your classmates to solve.

It was a particular joy this year to see Emily Prince, founding editor of Pride & Possibilities, get married and be established in her career. Emily is an Australian writer who I first met at a meeting of the Melbourne Jane Austen Society in 2013, when she was a student. Emily was one of the Foundation’s first volunteers, a delight to work with, and the obvious choice as editor for Pride & Possibilities, launched on October 31st, 2016. Now a librarian in Scotland, Emily works in a secondary school library, delivering stories into the hands of kids and teens, and by night she writes her own. Her short fiction has been published in multiple journals online and in print, and her unpublished novel was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award in 2021. At the beginning of 2022, Emily passed on the role of editor to Sophie Spruce, graduate student at the University of Texas at Arlington and a self-published author with several stories on Amazon. I sincerely thank Emily for her contribution to the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation and welcome Sophie to our team. 

The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation exists thanks to the exceptional support and generosity of our volunteers, supporters, donors, and participants. Our community and wide range of literacy activities, resources, and events are open to all, and our goal for the next year is to expand our reach. We want more teachers to access our free literacy resources for schools, more writers to enter our writing competition for the chance to be featured on an audiobook by multi-award-winning narrator, Alison Larkin, more Jane Austen Tea for Literacy parties than we’ve ever had before, and, most importantly, more children given a chance to connect through literacy.

Caroline Jane Knight

Founder & chair, Jane Austen Literacy Foundation. Author of Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage

Sign up to host a Jane Austen Tea for Literacy

Sign up for your party pack, with exclusive Jane Austen family recipes, games and activities, hosting guide, editable templates, playlist, and more... everything you need to host a Jane Austen Tea for Literacy.

Play Jane Austen and literacy games and enter the prize draw for your chance to WIN!

Raise $200 or more and you will receive a free download of your choice of two of Jane Austen's novels, narrated by Alison Larkin.