I recently ran across the web site of a group calling itself the Jane Austen Tea Society. According to the site, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that booklovers in possession of a good tearoom, must be in want of a Jane Austen discussion… Therefore, we began in July of 2008 with an aim to meet once a quarter to review a Jane Austen book and have a Full Afternoon Tea at a local Nashville tearoom.”
To date, this group – it’s not clear to me whether they’re a closed set of friends or an open-to-the-public association -- has apparently cycled through Austen’s novels twice and moved on to the works of British novelists from later in the nineteenth century, including Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell and the Brontës.
Frankly, I cannot imagine anything better than discussing all these great authors, except discussing all these great authors over tea and scones. I may have to move to Nashville.