Austen After Hours: A Jane Austen Book Club

SOLD OUT - Join the waitlist to be notified if a spot opens up at each meeting. $25 per meeting.

Please note: the date on this event is the date of our last meeting, November 18th - this is for ticketing reasons.

You are cordially invited to attend Austen After Hours: A Jane Austen Book Club presented by Titcomb’s Bookshop in partnership with Beth’s Bakery & Cafe. From Sense and Sensibility to Emma, celebrate 250 years of Jane Austen by discussing her classic novels with a cup of tea in hand at Beth’s Bakery & Cafe in Sandwich.

The book club will meet six times throughout the year (the third Wednesday of every other month), with each session focusing on a different Austen novel:

• January 21st: Sense and Sensibility
• March 18th: Pride and Prejudice
• May 20th: Northanger Abbey
• July 15th: Mansfield Park
• September 16th: Emma
• November 18th: Persuasion

Each meeting will begin at 6:30 PM and conclude at 8:00 PM. Tea and pastries are included with ticket purchase, and attendees will have the chance to win exciting Austenesque door prizes.

Register early and save $15 with Season Pass tickets ($135, non-refundable), which include admission to all six book club meetings and are currently available for purchase. If season passes do not sell out, Individual meeting tickets ($25 each) will go on sale Monday, 11/24. Please note: season passes are going fast and are expected to be sold out - this means it is likely that individual tickets will not become available. We will open up a waitlist for all meetings when tickets are sold out.

Season Passes can be purchased on this page or by calling Titcomb’s Bookshop at 508-888-2331. Please note that tickets are non-refundable. Space is limited and early registration is highly encouraged!

JANE AUSTEN was born on December 16, 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on July 18, 1817. As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.