The sound of music

Donald Trump has a lot of enemies, but it’s unclear how Jane Austen became one of them.

Nonetheless, earlier this year, when the Trump administration directed the National Endowment for the Humanities to cancel existing grants, among the casualties was an Austen project: Jane Austen’s Desk, a digital platform that provides free access to an array of materials (maps, Regency newspapers, family trees) contextualizing Austen’s work.

The site is designed to look like Austen’s workspace at Chawton Cottage, with pictures on the wall, unfinished needlework discarded on a chair, and manuscript pages lying atop Austen’s writing desk.

The project--spearheaded by Inger Brodey, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill—was awarded $100,000 in NEH funding nearly three years ago and was still in beta this spring when the NEH yanked the remaining funds.

Now Brodey and co-creator Sarah Walton, an assistant professor of English at Marshall University in West Virginia, are turning to crowdfunding to move their project forward. A holiday Kickstarter appeal seeks to raise $9,000 to enhance the site by adding music from Austen’s period.

“Music was central to Austen's creative life,” Brodey and Walton wrote last month. “This campaign will bring the specific pieces Austen knew, loved, and transcribed by hand to life through historical instruments, professional performances, and interactive tools—all freely accessible on our website.”

Brodey is an Austen scholar whose public humanities projects include the annual Jane Austen Summer Program, a four-day conference on Austen’s work; and a sister organization, Jane Austen & Co., which hosts an online lecture series on the Regency.

Donors to the Kickstarter appeal for Jane Austen’s Desk can get an array of fun rewards, from digital wallpaper to wine glasses inscribed with music-themed Austen quotes. Two-thirds of the way through the month-long campaign, the numbers remain anemic—about 15 percent of the goal had been raised as of last week--but there’s still time to donate before the end of Austen’s 250^th birthday year.