Yesterday, I wrote a blog post participating in the Day of DH project to crowd-source an answer the question “What do digital humanists do?” You can see it on the Day of DH-hosted site, here. Or you can see a version of it on the DigLibArts Blog here.
But today I am going to write about a small archival discovery. I am currently doing research at the lovely Chawton House Library, where I am working on a project on hospitality in Regency discourse, especially Jane Austen. Chawton is a great place to explore such a topic, since the people here are so amazingly hospitable.
But yesterday, a few of us had a “Squeee” moment. While paging through volume six of a bound edition of Addison and Steele’s The Spectator, we discovered some delicious marginalia. This book is from the Knight family collection, and this particular copy bears the handwriting of Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight. Edward, the third son in the Austen family, was made heir to childless relatives, the wealthy Knight family, and inherited from them the Chawton estate at which Jane Austen spent the last years of her life.
What’s fun about this book is that it bears Edward’s handwriting. On the front flyleaf, he inscribed it, in 1806, with his name “Edward Austen” and then, below that name but in what looks like the same hand, is written “Edward Knight Esq” without a date but with the location, Godmersham, the name of the other estate he inherited from the Knight family. There are also, in apparently the same hand, a number of sketches, possibly of a swan’s neck:
Apparently, the book put Edward in a sketching mood, because the pages near the end are also illustrated with some sketches, this time not of birds:
And that was our squealing moment in the archive yesterday. Not earth shattering, perhaps, but fun, nonetheless.
Digging Liberal Arts 
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