See Inside Jane Austen’s Lively Literary Mind Through Letters, Line Edits and Locks of Hair
To celebrate the author’s 250th birthday, a new exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City features original manuscripts, financial records and correspondence with family and friends
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/eli2.png)
On Jane Austen’s tombstone in Winchester Cathedral in England, no mention is made of her achievements as a novelist. Instead, the epitaph written by her brother James celebrates how “the benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her intimate connections.”
To be sure, Austen was a writer who avoided the limelight. She resided quietly among family in rural Hampshire for most of her life. None of the books she published in her lifetime—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma—were attributed to Austen by name.
But that doesn’t mean Austen was a “spinster who wrote as a kind of amusing pastime,” argues the New York Times’ Sarah Lyall. She was, ultimately, a serious writer who cared deeply about the literary reception and financial success of her books.
The richness of Austen’s life—as both a professional writer and as a woman of her time—is the subject of “A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250,” an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, in celebration of the novelist’s 250th birthday.
Objects on view include manuscripts of Austen’s works, nearly a third of her remaining letters, her gold and turquoise ring (once owned by pop singer Kelly Clarkson) and modern artistic interpretations of her work.
“Our aim in the show is to welcome every visitor—regardless of their prior knowledge of Jane Austen, level of interest in Jane Austen, possible prejudices against Jane Austen,” Juliette Wells, a co-curator of the exhibition and a literary scholar at Goucher College, said in a preview for the show, per Time Out’s Rossilynne Skena Culgan.
Set in wallpaper with designs from Austen’s home, the exhibition charts a chronological path through Austen’s 41 years. Because Austen was a prolific letter writer, often in correspondence with her older sister, Cassandra, the exhibition presents her life in her own words.
“Jane’s letters are as close as we can get to Jane the person,” co-curator Dale Stinchcomb explains to Town & Country’s Emily Burack. “Today her letters still read breathlessly, a firehose of news and gossip, and are often laugh-out-loud funny.”
But Austen’s epistolary material is limited. Cassandra burned the vast majority of her sister’s 3,000 letters. The Morgan owns 51 of the fewer than 200 remaining letters, which makes it the largest collection of her letters anywhere in the world.
Other objects on loan from over a dozen institutions and private collections, including Austen’s house in Chawton, England, fill in the gaps. A replica of her humble, 12-sided wooden writing desk allows visitors to imagine how the author perched as she wrote her six novels, including Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were published after her death. Silhouetted portraits of her parents, a lock of Austen’s hair and playful letters to her young niece are reminders that, despite her posthumous success, Austen was a modest figure in her lifetime.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/b0/f1/b0f13eab-0cc8-48d9-89c2-da241d4361f6/austen_emma_spines_pml-25476-78.jpg)
In fact, Austen solicited feedback on her novels from family and close friends. A document from the British Library that collected reviews of Emma notes that her brother Charles “liked it extremely,” although he observed that “there might be more wit” in Pride and Prejudice, per the exhibition guide. Her niece, Fanny Knight, “could not bear Emma herself,” but she found “Mr. Knightley delightful.”
Much is also made of Austen’s reception in America, where an “appreciative audience” of readers “played a major role in securing her place as one of the great English novelists,” according to a statement. Many of the objects on display are taken from the massive Austen-related collection of Alberta H. Burke. Of particular note are scraps on which Austen tracked her own finances and the profits of her novels.
“‘A Lively Mind’ examines how it was possible for Austen to publish her now-beloved novels when women generally were not permitted to become writers, much less encouraged to be,” Stinchcomb says in the statement. “In addition to her own brilliance, many people—friends, family, readers—made her who she is today, and we hope visitors come away feeling that they can have a profound impact on literature and the arts as well.”
“A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250” is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City through September 14, 2025.
