Lost Sheep – In Libraries | Reading with Austen

The ‘Reading with Austen’ website, spearheaded by Professor Peter Sabor*, has just been updated – with a total of twenty-one entries getting new or updated photos, and another forty with updated metadata. It has taken a while to get everything sorted, but with thanks to project manager Catherine Nygren and our web developer Nguyen Dinh, all has been finally accomplished.

We welcome you to the new and improved site, with all the recent finds of 2024 and 2025 now live with photos and information – for example:

– Moses Harris. The Aurelian: or, natural history of British insects, namely, moths and butterflies. London, 1773 – with its beautiful plates of insects:

– And books we have found elsewhere are now so recorded with images provided by the institution; for example this title found at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust:

Philip Miller. The Gardeners Kalendar. London, 1732.

At RwA: https://www.readingwithausten.com/east-wall-left.html?book-id=34#bookID-34

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The ‘Reading with Austen: Returning the Lost Sheep of Godmersham’ blog keeps us all current on latest finds. You can see what we have so far accomplished with these lists of Lost Sheep:

1. Lost Sheep we have found and returned to Chawton House: 26

Lost Sheep Found!

2. Lost Sheep we have found in institutions or private collections – all are so noted on the website: 34

Lost Sheep in Libraries

3. Lost Sheep we have either found then lost at auction, or those titles that at some point were in an auction or a bookseller’s catalogue – these are still lost to us but we know they exist and will hopefully show up again: 156

Lost Sheep Found but Still Lost

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None of this could have been done without the unfailing support and eagle eyes of our dedicated and generous group of GLOSSians! Keeping an eye on auctions and bookseller catalogues is the reason we have been able to find and return as many as we have. There are still many more out there, so let us know if you find anything. And if you would like to be added to our mailing list to be kept current on our ongoing book detective adventures, please contact us here.

In the meantime, please visit the website and explore: you will see exactly what Jane Austen would have seen on the shelves in her many visits to her brother Edward’s library at Godmersham Park.

*Peter Sabor will be giving an online zoom talk on the state of GLOSS and its finds to the Jane Austen Society on Saturday October 10, 2026, 11:00 am ET [4:00 pm UK] – if you are a JAS member you can register for the talk when they email the link to the membership.

C2026ReadingwithAustenBlog

As we near the end of 2024 (!), I’d like to give you all an update on the state of our LOST SHEEP for the past year. The last few months have brought us several new finds – once again giving us hope that there are STILL GPL titles out there to be found – and once again, a thank you to you all for your generosity and eagle eyes.

Here the summary, the most recent first:

1. With a very generous and anonymous donation from one of our GLOSS supporters, along with remaining funds in our kitty from all of you, we have been able to purchase a much-wanted work we thought well out of our reach. With a sizable discount from the bookseller, this will be shipped to Chawton House first thing in the New Year.

HARRIS, Moses. The Aurelian: or, natural history of British insects, namely, moths and butterflies. Together with the plants on which they feed. Published by London for the Author 1773, 1766

First edition, second issue; folio (47 x 28.2 cm); large paper copy, engraved vignette on title-page, engraved coloured schematic plate in preliminaries, 44 hand-coloured engraved plates (the final plate dated 1773, all watermarked Villedary)…

Moses Harris (1730-1787) was an accomplished artist as well as entomologist, and this work contains details of more than forty butterflies and moths, along with some beetles and dragonflies. From the library of Montagu George Knight (1844-1914) of Chawton, great nephew of Jane Austen.

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[We had already located the other Harris book in the GPL: The English Lepidoptera: or, the Aurelian’s Pocket Companion. containing a Catalogue of upward of Four Hundred Moths and Butterflies (1775) – it is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC]

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2. A search alert for “Montagu George Knight” sent this our way:

Edwards, Bryon. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. by Bryan Edwards, of the Island of Jamaica. [Volume One only]. London. Printed for John Stockdale. 1793.

This is unfortunately only vol. I of a 2 vol. set – it had sold at Sotheby’s in 1965, so where oh where is the volume II? – will keep our eyes open. The bookseller in Canada did give us a discount and has shipped it to Peter, who will bring it to Chawton House on a future trip [the book is quite large and heavy, so he needs to take it when he has nothing else in his luggage!] – front cover is detached, unremarked by the bookseller, but still a great find…

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3. Out of the blue, a gentleman in Germany emailed us that he had a multi-volume set of books by E. D. Clarke that his father had in his extensive collection of works about Africa:

Clarke, Edward Daniel. Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. 4^th ed. 11 volumes. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1816 +.

Our GLOSSians were very generous and we were immediately able to purchase this set and they are now at Chawton House – here are a few images:

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We also discovered with this purchase a correction to the GPL catalogue which clarified the exact title of this set. We are also still looking for Clarke’s other work, A Tour through the South of England, Wales, and part of Ireland, made during the summer of 1791. London: Minerva Press, 1793.

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Clarke is most interesting to us for a number of reasons: he was the younger brother of James Stanier Clarke, the Prince Regent’s librarian and Jane Austen’s bothersome correspondent. The younger Clarke was quite to die for, unlike his brother, as this image conveys: history may have been different for our Jane if EDWARD had been the Prince’s librarian! [and a great cover for a regency romance…]

The other connection to Jane Austen is that both Clarke boys went to the Tonbridge School, the school George Austen attended…love these sorts of connections… [and with thanks to Azar for the info.]

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4. Another recent find, but alas! not to be returned to Chawton, is a book I found with some random searching at the special collections at NYU:

Orrery, John Boyle, Earl of, 1707-1762. Letters from Italy in the years 1754 and 1755. London: B. White, 1773. With the armorial bookplate : Montagu George, Knight of Chawton [a common cataloguing error… I think Montagu would approve of being catalogued as a knight…]

Images of this title will be on the website soon, with thanks to NYU for permission to publish them.

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So a great year for GLOSS and with hopes for such continuing success in 2025. We could not have done any of this without our Team of GLOSSians who have been ever generous with giving us the ability to find and return these books to Chawton House. Thank you all!

If you would like to be part of the team and be on our email list to be kept current with our search efforts., please send an email to: bygonebooksvt [at] gmail [dot] com .

Wishing all a Very Happy 2025, with wishes for Peace in the World, and that your life will be filled with Fabulous Books!