Hopkins Journeys: Celebrating the World of Jane Austen

Please select your options below. If you select the "Total Jane Austen Weekend Package", please do not also select individual options.

Come dressed in your finest Regency or festive attire for an evening that brings Jane Austen’s world to life at the historic Carriage House at Evergreen.

We’ll begin with a welcome reception featuring wine, spirits, and elegant passed hors d’oeuvres—plus a Regency-style photo booth for your most dashing or demure poses.

Then settle in for a fascinating and beautifully illustrated talk by Mary Favret, Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, entitled “The Edge of the World: Things in Jane Austen’s Fiction.” Explore how the everyday objects in Austen’s novels reveal deeper truths about her world—and ours.

Following the lecture, enjoy a three-course, family-style dinner with an open bar. Choose from classic roasted chicken, beef à la mode, or a vegetable Napoléon, all served with care in an elegant setting.

After dinner, the evening continues with a lively Austen-inspired country dance during desserts, featuring the joyful music of Ken Kolodner, BSPH, ’85 (PhD) & Brad Kolodner, masters of English country and folk dance led by a dance caller. (Yes, dancing is encouraged—but so is simply enjoying the music with a glass in hand.) Learn more about their music at www.kenandbrad.com.

If you’re registering with a guest, please include them in your registration or indicate in the form that you’d like to be seated together.

Begin your day with a step back in time—into the art, objects, and materials that shaped Jane Austen’s world.

We’ll start with a private curator-led tour at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where guests will explore artworks from the age of Austen. Take a turn about the galleries featuring British royal portraits, richly detailed English silver, and porcelain that reflect the social and political worlds Austen and her characters inhabited. The tour also explores how British imperialism shaped material culture from South Asia to the Americas, and highlights the lesser-known women artists of the 18th and 19th centuries who painted, sculpted, and forged their own views of the world—much like Austen herself.

After the tour, enjoy a hands-on workshop in the Museum's JEC Studio: Iron Gall Ink Making and Quill Carving, led by bookmaking associate Brittany Murray from the Pyramid Arts Center. 

In this immersive session, participants will:

• Create historic iron gall ink from scratch, following a centuries-old recipe

• Carve a quill pen from a real goose feather

• Stitch a simple pamphlet book—perfect for practicing your newfound 19th-century penmanship

All materials are provided, and participants will leave with their own custom quill, hand-stitched booklet, and two vials of ink—plus a deeper appreciation for the tools Austen herself may have used.

A boxed lunch is included between your morning exploration and creative afternoon!

Complete your Austen weekend with a tour of one of the most significant literary collections in North America. Goucher College, the proud home of the Jane Austen Collection, welcomes guests for a curated tour and celebration of the woman behind this extraordinary archive—Alberta Hirshheimer Burke, a 1928 Goucher alumna whose passion for Austen led to one of the finest private collections of Austen materials ever assembled.

Guests may also explore several Jane Austen-themed exhibitions while rotating through the Special Collections. Highlights include rare and first editions from the Jane Austen Collection, a new art installation by MICA and Goucher Artists-in-Residence Lauren Adams and Victoria Pass, a student-curated exhibit honoring collector Alberta H. Burke, and a display celebrating the iconic 1995 adaptations that sparked a new wave of Austen appreciation.

Shuttle service will be available from The Study at Johns Hopkins to Goucher College beginning at 2:30 PM, or you’re welcome to drive to the campus on your own.

Following the tour of the collection, enjoy afternoon tea service and a lecture by Dr. Juliette Wells, A&S '97 (MA), Austen scholar and guest co-curator of the Morgan Library’s exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250. Her talk—“Celebrating Alberta H. Burke and 50 Years of Jane Austen at Goucher”—offers a look into Alberta Burke’s legacy, her collaboration with her husband Henry Burke, a Johns Hopkins alumnus, and how this “Austen archive” continues to shape global scholarship and celebration today.

Guests will also enjoy selections from Pride and Prejudice, the opera by Kirke Mechem, performed by students from the Peabody Conservatory. The afternoon concludes with a festive champagne toast in honor of Austen’s birthday.