The Jane Austen Playlist

07/28/2026

Concert time.

07/28/2026

Tonight! 🎶🎹📚

The Jane Austen Music Books - Tuesday 28th July 7pm

Gillian Dooley and Laura Klein present aprogramme of songs and piano music drawn from Jane Austen’s own sheet music collection, including French, Scottish, and Irish music, and some songs that Austen’s niece Caroline remembers her singing in the last years of her life.
Gillian Dooley is a literary scholar and a singer based at Flinders University in South Australia, and is currently a fellow at IASH at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and Music (Manchester University Press, 2024).

07/22/2026

CHAWTON HOUSE • Day 3

🎹 One of the joys of being at the House has been the opportunity to pop down to the dining room for some playing on the 1828 Stodart pianoforte. I never tire of playing a piano; this one has become very familiar to me over the past few years and it feels like an old friend.

🎶: Mrs. Hamilton of Pincaitland’s Strathspey by Nathaniel Gow

07/20/2026

CHAWTON HOUSE • Day 1

📜 My research continues, this week in the lovely Reading Room at . My commute, just a short little walk across the road, was much shorter than last week when I took the bus to and from Wi******er every day. I spent all day looking through conduct books, music books, volumes of songs and ballads, and resources about English theatre.

🙌🏼 All in all, a good day.

07/18/2026

in 1817, Cassandra Austen deeply mourned the loss of her dearest sister and friend, Jane. On this day 209 years later, the world remembers the brilliance of a literary genius gone too soon. 💫📚

🎹 Recollection by Haydn, performed at 8 College Street, 1817 Clementi & Co. pianoforte

07/18/2026

Meeting the indomitable and brilliant Jane Austen's niece: Caroline Jane Knight after years of remote friendship — and at her childhood home of Chawton no less — was an absolute treat. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is the founder of the rapidly expanding global non-profit organization, Jane Austen Literacy Foundation (check out the remarkable work the Foundation is doing around the world!). She also happens to be Jane Austen’s fifth great niece and of the last generation to grow up at Chawton House, the home of Jane’s brother, Edward Austen Knight.

Accolades aside, she is also one of the kindest and most effervescent women I’ve met — she does her legacy proud while creating one of her own. Thank you, Caroline, for making time for me on your busy departure day! It was a joy and delight to connect in person 🌟

On my last morning in Chawton, rushing to leave for the airport, I got a message from Laura Klein—who had just arrived in Chawton to begin some research. We've known each other remotely for years, so I stopped into the Old Kitchen Tearoom at Chawton House for a quick cup of tea before heading home.

I'm so glad I did.

Laura is a pianist, historical musicologist, and founder of The Jane Austen Playlist—a project dedicated to the music in the Austen Family Music Books, the collection gathered by Jane and the women of her family. Laura performs and researches this music throughout the US and UK, including at Jane Austen's House, and she's currently completing her PhD on the subject at the University of Colorado Boulder. Laura is also an ambassador for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.

Jane practised the pianoforte every morning before breakfast at Chawton Cottage. Music was woven through her life and her novels—a way of revealing character, expressing emotion, and navigating the social world her heroines inhabited. Laura has devoted her career to bringing that music back to life.

She's in Chawton to investigate a fascinating question about Jane as a pianist. I can't say more than that—it's Laura's story to tell. But I'm very much looking forward to seeing the results of her work.

So there we were sharing a cup of tea in the tearoom that was once the kitchen of Chawton House, just a few hundred metres from where Jane herself would have played her own piano.

It was the perfect way to end a month at Chawton. 💛

07/18/2026

CHAWTON, HAMPSHIRE • Jane Austen’s Village

📚 What joy to be in the village where spent her most creatively fulfilling years through the revising, writing, and publication of her beloved novels…! It was also here in Chawton that she once again had unlimited access to an instrument, at which she ‘practised every morning’ before breakfast (Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir).

🎹 For one who began her day with music, access to an instrument was vital—a necessary outlet for her creativity. Some of the tunes she practised are now accessible on the Jane Austen’s Desk digital platform; more are available on our respective social media pages (Jane Austen’s Desk and The Jane Austen Playlist). And keep an eye out here for special features of my musical adventures over the next few weeks!

🎵: Sweet Transports by William Shield, recorded at Jane Austen’s House, 1813 Clementi & Co. pianoforte

07/14/2026

So much has been happening that I haven’t had time to post in a while. (It’s a fab problem to have…) Keep an eye out for a series of posts that will share some exciting developments and updates! 🙌🏼

🎹 Catching up first with a post about my lecture recital at hosted by , “Jane Austen’s Music Collection: Impacts on Her Life and Literature.”

Thanks to Lidia Chang for chairing my session and to Susan Tattershall for the photos.