Anna

At the age of twenty seven, in the early 1950s, Anna Quillen became addicted to Jane Austen while residing pregnantly in the Philippines. When bouts of homesickness reinforced morning sickness, she discovered that Jane Austen reading binges provided the most effective relief for both conditions. Alas, the Austen gene was not transmitted; not one of her four children has gone farther than to keep a copy of Pride and Prejudice on the bookshelf. Anna graduated from Tusculum Collge (Greenville, Tennessee) in 1946 and received a Master's degree from the University of Tennessee in 1948. She was a newspaper reporter in Kingport, Tennessee, and subsequently taught remedial English in the Philippines and Wisconsin. She learned of the existence of the Jane Austen Society in 1987 while living in New York City and has participated its activities ever since.