A gold and turquoise ring once owned by Jane Austen and purchased last year at auction by the singer Kelly Clarkson may find a permanent home in Britain after all, thanks to an anonymous donor.
In a plot twist perhaps worthier of Dickens (or Kickstarter), a donor has given the Jane Austen’s House Museum in Hampshire $155,000 toward matching Ms. Clarkson’s bid of $236,000, providing it can raise the additional money by December. On Aug. 1 the British minister of culture, Ed Vaizey, issued an order temporarily banning the export of the ring.
The ring first passed from Austen to her sister, Cassandra, who later gave it to her future sister-in-law Eleanor Jackson after Eleanor’s engagement to Henry Thomas Austen, Jane and Cassandra’s brother. It remained in the family until the sale to Ms. Clarkson, who also owns a replica of the ring given to her by her fiancé, Brandon Blackstock.
If the ring does go to the Hampshire museum, it will join celebrated items like Austen’s writing desk, some of her letters, and music books annotated by her hand, as well as a shelf of humbler artifacts found under the house’s floor boards.
It will also probably be part of an exhibition next year celebrating the bicentennial of the publication of “Mansfield Park,†in which Fanny Price is given an amber cross by her brother, much as Austen’s own brother gave her an amber cross, which is now held by the museum.
“To have the cross and ring together is very exciting,†Louise West, the museum’s manager, told The Guardian.
