The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, founded by Pierpont Morgan

From the Collection:

Jane Austen

Shown here is the only surviving complete manuscript of a novel by Jane Austen. This epistolary novel, or novel in letters, chronicles the affairs of the vibrant and manipulative Lady Susan. It was written when Austen was nineteen years old. She made this fair copy several years later to be read by family and friends, writing out the story in her neat, expansive hand, and possibly adding the "Conclusion" at that time as well. The manuscript remained untitled and unpublished at her death. It was first published in 1871 in the appendix to James Edward Austen-Leigh's second edition of A Memoir of Jane Austen.

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Multimedia

Curator Roger Wieck discusses selections from the greatest of all Dutch illuminated manuscripts, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Click to play »

Rembrandt and Picasso, Mozart, Bob Dylan, Dickens and Hemingway, Gutenberg Bibles, and Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum is, in the words of The New York Times, "extra special, in a class of its own."

Located in midtown Manhattan at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, the Morgan houses one of the world's greatest collections of artistic, literary, and musical works, from ancient times to the medieval and Renaissance periods to the present day.

CORSAIR, the Morgan's online collection catalog, is available here.