Jane Austen manuscripts

Jane Austen excerpt

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts is a joint project from the University of Oxford, King’s College and the British Library, that seeks to create a digital resource from all of the author’s surviving manuscripts.

Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation.

Great care has been taken to provide a digital record of the original materials, as well as an accurate transcription which can be viewed simultaneously.

Austen’s handwriting and punctuation are agreed to be of great importance in the understanding of her work but have hitherto been little studied. The mark up scheme has recorded orthographic variants and punctuation symbols in minute detail for subsequent computational interrogation.

The flash interface is somewhat awkward to use, but the “diplomatic display” is quite impressive.