News

Our NEH-funded digital humanities project, Jane Austen's Desk, now has music too! Travel back to March, 1813 and enter Austen's world via our site. If you hover over the pianoforte in the right side of the room, you will be able to enter a space to learn about five representative pieces of music from Jane Austen's life. We will be adding more music regularly. Thanks to our collaboration with the talented Laura Klein, users can learn about genres of music, composers, and conne

Coming on September 11, 2026 with Johns Hopkins UP. An A–Z Guide to Jane Austen's World features 26 carefully chosen words in order to illuminate the social customs, material culture, language, and historical forces shaping Jane Austen's fiction and life. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout by my talented colleague Harriet Wu (who also illustrated Jane Austen's Desk). A recurring theme is Austen's response to the rapidly changing age in which she lived, as well as

I'm delighted to announce that Johns Hopkins decided to release a paperback edition of Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness. It is available now for preorder on Amazon and elsewhere. I am gratified that the excellent reviews in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Sunday Times (London) and elsewhere, as well as robust sales warranted this new edition. I was also happy to be able to make a few small corrections to the text as well.

I recently spent a glorious few days in Sydney, Australia, invited to speak at a weekend event arranged by the talented Susannah Fullerton and many others in the Jane Austen Society of Australia. The other speakers included Carrie Kablean, David and Lisa Campbell, Jane Caro, Steve Rohan-Jones, and Scarlett Hopper. The program was thoughtfully arranged and attracted over 200 lively attendees.

Click on the image to go to our Kickstarter page. Jane Austen’s Desk is a digital humanities project for the public funded (until recently) by the NEH. JAD recreates Jane Austen’s world in 1813, serving as an interactive teaching tool and scholarly resource for all readers interested in Austen’s intellectual and material world, including her vicarious travels. Please consider supporting our campaign so we can add Jane Austen’s hand-copied music to the Desk with period accurat

Anisa Khalifa, who attended part of our Jane Austen Summer Program in New Bern, NC, has just posted an episode of WUNC's The Broadside...

You can learn more about the features in our new project here!

Thanks to Alexandra Mullen for a creative and thought-provoking review of my book.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a63633376/jane-austen-gen-z-fans/ This lovely article by Lydia Venn talks about Austen's...

Sarah Schafer Walton and I had fun presenting Jane Austen's Desk at the "Innovation Room" of the Modern Language Association's annual meeting. Remember, if you too want to try it out, go to beta.janeaustensdesk.org! Let us know what you think...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz_diwzlo7Q Susan Allen Ford and Inger S. B. Brodey discuss their new books This was an in-person event...

My gratitude to Susannah Fullerton for including Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness in her top ten books of 2024. Read her list here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/my-2024-favourites/ Historian and Literary Critic Susannah Fullerton