Episode 5: “The Jane Phenomenon” - Juliette Wells

In 2023, Dr. Wells. Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College, completed a "groundbreaking trio" of books published by Bloomsbury Academic that revolutionizes how we understand Austen’s rise to fame. This trilogy includes Everybody’s Jane, Reading Austen in America , and A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist. Beyond her own writing, she is the editor behind the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, Persuasion and Mansfield Park—specifically designed to be "reader-friendly" for a new generation. In 2025, she co-curated  the major 250th-anniversary exhibition, A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. In this lively podcast, the Austen Pod Squad, co-hosts, Marcia Johnson, Sherry Lockwood, and Jen Mulsow explore collecting, curating, teaching, and student experience in reading Jane Austen in America with Dr. Wells who shares her deep research and vast Austen knowledge with our listeners.