Jane Austen Bingo!

Jane Austen (1775-1817) on engraving from 1873. English novelist. Engraved by unknown artist and published in ”Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women with Biographies”,USA,1873.

In 2020, I organized my first Jane Austen Bingo event. It was Covid days, and I was teaching a synchronous Zoom course on Austen. I wanted to find fun ways to build community online. I learned about Jane Austen Bingo at the 2020 Jane Austen Society of American meeting, which had to move online, too. In my course, I played with about fifteen students, and the prizes were recorded Austen tarot card readings that I made for the winners. (Yup, I have a Jane Austen tarot deck.) I had to make videos of my readings because we could not meet in person.

Five years ago, students told me they enjoyed it, so I thought it might be fun to resurrect Jane Austen Bingo for this year’s 250th anniversary of Austen’s birthday.

I mentioned to the officers in my uni’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society, that I wanted to do this, and we agreed that we could host a bingo night to raise some funds for our society, which receives no funding from the university of the national office.

So we came up with a way to celebrate Austen, give away some awesome prizes, and hold a fundraiser.

Here’s the flyer I made for the event:

Here’s a photo of the baskets our chapter president, Kathryn Grover, and I put together:

I donated some of my own Austen swag. Professors and staff either donated merch or funds. A local bookstore donated a gift certificate. Kathryn and I bought some items, and we also donated our services. I donated a Jane Austen tarot card reading for one of the winners. Kathryn agreed to make fifty of her famous Oreo balls, which are so yummy that people line up for orders.

I made the bingo cards on an ironically named website called My Free Bingo Cards. It’s ironic because it’s not free if you want more than 30 cards. As you can see from the image below, this version of bingo does not have B, I, N, G, or O and numbers. It has Austen character names:

I used a website word spinner called Wheel of Names to announce the names on the squares. I added the character names and the image of our dear Jane.

I clicked spin, and then the wheel would spin until it landed on a character name. I’d announce the name and give a one-off funny description of the character. For example: Mrs. Price from Mansfield Park. “She married the wrong guy–someone in the Navy.”