Agathe (Camille Rutherford) works in the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris, where she dreams of becoming a successful writer and of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel. Instead, she finds herself desperately single and plagued by writer’s block. When Agathe’s best friend (Pablo Pauly) helps secure her a spot at the Jane Austen Writers’ Residency in England, Agathe finally has her Jane Austen moment . . . and is caught in a very unexpected romantic triangle. In the end, Agathe must let go of her insecurities to decide what she really wants for herself and to achieve her romantic and professional dreams.

POST SCREENING PANEL DISCUSSION
Jane Austen’s novels have inspired countless adaptations in film, literature, television, and theater. Our distinguished panel will dive deep into the author’s unparalleled influence on the arts and her enduring appeal, tracing themes of class, gender, and marriage in her work and their resonance in today’s world.

SONIA HOFKOSH, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Chair of English at Tufts University

Sonia Hofkosh is the author of Sexual Politics and the Romantic Author and coeditor of Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780–1834. She has published essays on Jane Austen and among her favorite courses to teach is one that considers Austen’s marriage plots in relation to Mary Shelley’s speculative fiction.

DEIDRE LYNCH, Ph.D.
Ernest Bernbaum Professor of English Literature at Harvard University

Deidre Lynch is the editor of Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees and has prepared editions of Austen’s Persuasion for Oxford University Press and Mansfield Park for Harvard University Press. She is also the author of Loving Literature: A Cultural History and has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Public Books.

TARA MENON, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English at Harvard University

Tara Menon’s debut novel, Under Water, will be published by Riverhead Books in
March, and her first monograph, Speaking Parts: Conversation, Character, and Social
Worlds, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in the fall of 2026.

Moderator:

MARY COTTON
Mary has owned and operated Newtonville Books with her husband, the writer and editor Jaime Clarke, for nearly twenty years.