To say retired Dawson English teacher Elaine Bander has had an almost lifelong love affair with 18^th and 19^th century novels is no exaggeration. Ironically, she avoided Jane Austen novels until her third year of university at McGill. Then she read Emma for a course and was hooked. She moved onto other novels, letters, and fragments.

Since that time, she has made her way to becoming a premiere Jane Austen authority, presenting and attending conferences at Jane Austen gatherings near and far. And now, her first book, Reading with Jane Austen, a labour of love, has been published by Bucknell University Press for release on March 10.

“The year I was hired to teach at Dawson in 1972, I began the preliminary research for a dissertation on Austen,” she told DNews. “It wasn’t always easy to keep up with scholarly research while teaching at Dawson, but I think it made me a better teacher to be engaged in my own work as well as the compelling responsibilities of CEGEP teaching.”

During her Dawson career, Elaine also served on the DTU union executive, on Senate and the Board of Governors, and chaired one of the largest English departments in the post-secondary educational system in Canada. She continued to research and publish essays about Austen as well as other late Georgian novelists.

“I always hoped to collect my lifetime’s collection of ideas into a book,” she added. She began to work on the book in January 2023 while helping to care for her newborn granddaughter and was finishing the final revisions in December 2024 when her husband passed away.

“A lot of love and grief accompanied my writing. The world would be better if everyone read Austen.”

In a few weeks, they can read Elaine Bander’s unique take on Austen’s seminal works.