Southern Highlands Branch Meeting 2024-1

“Ten novels that changed the world”

Susannah Fullerton OAM FRSN

Author, Literary Lecturer, and Tour Leader

Date: Thursday, 15 February 2024, 6.30 pm AEDT 
Venue: RSL Mittagong, Carrington Room
All are welcome

Summary: Literature has always had the power to change – just think of the impact of the King James Bible, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. And yet fiction too has the power to change – to evoke sympathy, to make us take on different opinions, and even to bring about political and legal change. 

This talk examines ten novels that altered our world when it came to race relations, charity, the shape of literature, and the plight of the poor and the different. Discover which novels have had a universal impact and be encouraged to think about which books you would select as having in some way brought about enormous change.

President of Jane Austin Society of Australia, Susannah Fullerton OAM FRSN majored in English Literature at the University of Auckland. She then completed a postgraduate degree in Victorian fiction and prose at the University of Edinburgh. For over 25 years Susannah has been President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia. She has lectured extensively on Jane Austen in Australia and overseas and has published many articles about Jane Austen’s works. She is the co-author of Jane Austen – Antipodean Views and published Jane Austen and Crime in 2004, and Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia (Picador) in 2009. Susannah’s latest books are A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and a memoir Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction.