I’m organizing a blog series in honour of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and I need help with a title, please! Longtime readers of this blog will remember my unimaginative titles for “Pride and Prejudice at 200” and “The Custom of the Country at 100.”

Twice, now, I’ve been saved from a third title that’s “very dull indeed”: in 2014, Laurel Ann Nattress proposed “An Invitation to Mansfield Park” and in 2015-16, Nora Bartlett offered “Emma in the Snow.” I’m grateful to both for their creative suggestions.

What do you think would work well for this new series on Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, dear readers? I’d love to hear your ideas! Please comment on this blog post or email me (semsley at gmail dot com), before September 30th.

If I choose the title you suggest, I’ll send you a set of cards featuring photos I’ve taken of Austen-related sites in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. (For details about places Charles and Francis Austen and their families visited in Halifax, please see the walking tour Sheila Johnson Kindred and I created earlier this year: “Austens in Halifax.”)

The series will begin in December 2017. I’m thrilled to announce that contributors include Carol Adams, Maggie Arnold, Elaine Bander, Deborah Barnum, Gisèle Baxter, John Baxter, Lyn Bennett, Diana Birchall, Serena Burdick, L. Bao Bui, Christy Ann Conlin, Natasha Duquette, Lynn Festa, Marcia McClintock Folsom, Susannah Fullerton, William Hutchings, Hazel Jones, Theresa Kenney, Sheila Johnson Kindred, Deborah Knuth Klenck, Maggie Lane, Elisabeth Lenckos, Dan Macey, Rohan Maitzen, Sara Malton, Ellen Moody, Leslie Nyman, Lisa Pliscou, Mary Lu Redden, Jessica Richard, Peter Sabor, Paul Savidge, Kate Scarth, Edward Scheinman, Judith Sears, Kerry Sinanan, Laaleen Sukhera, Margaret C. Sullivan, Judith Thompson, Deborah Yaffe, Kim Wilson, and Daniel Woolf.

On the first day of autumn this year, September 22nd, I’ll share a preview of the series, with a guest post on Persuasion and John Keats’s “Ode to Autumn,” by William Hutchings.

I’m excited to share all these posts with you and I’m looking forward to conversations about both novels. I’m very much hoping the series title will be more interesting than “Northanger Abbey and Persuasion at 200.” Please help!