Jane Austen's Desk Kickstarter Campaign: Interview with Inger Brodey

Jane Austen's Desk (JAD), our award-winning digital humanities platform, provides users with a window into Austen's world and a space for scholars, fans, and general readers around the world to explore and learn, as well as connect and collaborate. This interpretive vision of Austen's writing space and traveling desk hosts historical, musical, literary, material culture, and philosophical sources in as interactive a manner as possible. The website simulates Jane Austen's imaginative world and network of influences as of Tuesday, March 30, 1813. 

Click image to visit Jane Austen's Desk.

With the loss of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), JAD has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $9,000. This money is necessary to give tribute to the specific music Austen knew, loved, and transcribed by hand. The JAD team will add interactive tools with access to this music, making it come alive for all kinds of Janeites, by using historical instruments, professional performers, historic illustrations, information about composers and specific pieces, and images of Austen’s own sheet music.

The project will only be funded if we reach this goal by Sunday, December 28 at 11:59 PM ET. To help spread the word and encourage support, we interviewed Inger Brodey, JAD co-creator and Principal Investigator for the previous National Endowment for Humanities Digital Projects for the Public grant. Inger serves as president of the Jane Austen Collaborative Board and co-founder of the Jane Austen Summer Program (JASP) and the Jane Austen & Co. web series. She is professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has published extensively on Jane Austen and the history of the novel, including her book Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness (Johns Hopkins, 2024).

What is your role with Jane Austen's Desk?

I am Co-Creator and PI on previous NEH grants.

What was the inspiration behind creating Jane Austen's Desk? Why is this project crucial for educating the public about Jane Austen and her novels? 

I have always been attracted to websites that imitate an author's desk, with little interactive surprises hidden here and there. It feels intimate, playful, and fun to explore such sites. Why limit such sites to present-day authors, I thought. Could Austen's writing slope function as "her desk" as well as be a portal to Austen's own time and place? As soon as I spoke with Sarah Walton, I knew I had a kindred spirit and fellow visionary for this project. Sarah also had more knowledge of digital humanities projects that I did. So we became co-creators of this site. We wanted to provide a new window on Austen's lived experiences, material surroundings, documentable reading, and her vicarious travels, in order that readers of any age could get a sense of Austen's creative process and the many ideas that shaped her novels. We wanted it to be a demonstration of the width and breadth of her world knowledge, even though she traveled so little in her own lifetime. She nonetheless corresponded closely with her brothers and two sisters-in-law, who were world travelers. So it is partly a myth-busting mission.

What is your favorite JAD feature?

I love the vicarious travels section. Sarah managed to get the wonderful interactive globe map from our collaborators in Scotland, and it has been fun to design ways that viewers can interact with the globe and its associated data. We were very proud to add the travels of Eliza de Feuillide to the site just this month.

Click image to visit 'Travels' feature.

Why is adding music to JAD important?

We want to give a sense of Austen's interactions with the world around her. Music was an important part of her life and arguably key to her writing itself. Our long-term plan includes adding not only high-resolution images of her hand-transcribed music, but also links between the music and specific passages in her novels, professional recording on period instruments by Laura Klein, links to additional historical information, opportunities to compare the sound of various historical instruments, and even the chance for viewers to try to play along.

Why should people support JAD's Kickstarter campaign? 

After receiving two generous grants from the NEH funding line for "Digital Projects for the Public," we were surprised when the NEH cancelled that funding line altogether. We have applied for funding to develop state-of-the-art digital editions of Austen's writings and a new online concordance. But apart from occasional gifts from individual donors, we don't have any other source for funds to further develop the interdisciplinary aspects of the site. Besides, Jane Austen loved her music. What better way to celebrate her 250th than by giving animating her "desk" with something she loved so much?

Visual prototype of anticipated JAD feature. Visitors will be able to explore the unique sounds and mechanics of the pianoforte and harpsichord firsthand, playing pieces and even reading sheet music transcribed by Jane Austen herself.

If you're interested in supporting JAD's goal of adding music to the site, please make your donation here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janeaustencoll/adding-music-to-jane-austens-desk.

Thank you for your support!