The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) conducts an annual student Essay Contest to foster the study and appreciation of Jane Austen’s works in new generations of readers.
Students world-wide are invited to compete for scholarship awards which can be found below. The contest is open to high school students and home-schooled students enrolled at the high school level during the contest year.
2022 Contest Topic
The 2022 Essay Contest topic relates to Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility.
Family relations loom large in this book, and Austen has more than one story to tell, with four sets of siblings and notable mothers. Essays can focus on relations between siblings or pairs of siblings, between mothers and their offspring, or perhaps on characteristics (apart from sense and sensibility) embodied by a related or unrelated pair.
Family trees for the main characters are available here.
Submissions
The deadline for submissions is Thursday, June 2, 2022. Be sure to visit the Submissions page to review the contest rules and eligibility requirements before entering.
Essay Contest Awards
JASNA awards scholarships to winners in each of the three divisions:
- First Place: $1,000 scholarship and free registration and two nights’ lodging for JASNA’s upcoming Annual General Meeting (Transportation to the conference is not provided.)
- Second Place: $500 scholarship
- Third Place: $250 scholarship
Winners will each receive one year of memberships in JASNA and a set of Norton Critical Editions of Jane Austen’s novels. The winning essays will also be published on this website.