The Bodleian Library in Oxford recently exhibited a sampler (along with other items) for one day to celebrate World Book Day on March 1. This linen cross stitch sampler, purportedly made by a 12-year-old Jane Austen in 1787, was displayed for the very first time. The stitching has become frayed and undone, so that the sampler appears to have been made in 1797. A stylized border with flowering trees surround the words to the psalm, “Praise the Lord O my soul.”
The sampler was purchased in 1996 for over £2000. According to the sale catalogue, the “present owner, who lives in Gloucestershire, received the sampler as a present, folded inside a tobacco tin.” A note on the back of the frame states that an early owner was “related to Jane Austen the novelist” and that she had “received it as a memento” of Austen’s life. (Such a practice was very common after a person died. Letters and personal items were given to close friends and family members as a remembrance.)
I must add that this sampler’s provenance is doubtful. The provenance cannot be directly traced to Jane Austen, and “an early owner related to Jane Austen” simply does not provide enough reliable information.
Sampler detail. Image @Jane Austen Centre Gift Shop*
Jane Austen prided herself on her precise sewing skills. This sampler shows a more inexperienced hand than a seamstress in her later years. (I must add that a sampler I made at a similar age does not look nearly half as good.)
Jane mentions a young needlewoman in Northanger Abbey. Henry Tilney remarks upon the age difference between Catherine Morland and himself:
“I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!”
To which she responds: “Not very good I am afraid.”
More on the topic
Jane Austen's World 
We visited the Jane Austen house at Chawton last week and saw displayed there a sampler signed by Jane Austen, although there was some uncertainty about whether it was done by her or someone else with the same name. I don’t remember if it was dated. The house museum contains known examples of her needlework, including a lace scarf and a handsome quilt with chintz squares that her mother and Cassandra also worked on. Volunteers at the museum have beautifully recreated the bed hangings that are appropriate for the reproduction bed in the room she shared with Cassandra.
Thank you so much for this added information, Kay!
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I’m just giving a high recommendation on my two favorite Austen blogs today to the new Harvard completely annotated (history, illustrations) edition of Persuasion. Moreover, for some reason, at this reading I’m completely re-seeing the book. In the past I always thought that Anne was to be blamed for not accepting Wentworth originally. But now I see that Wentworth at the time of his proposal had no money; that he had gained money in the past but spent it; and that he was really a little overconfident about his future prospects. The mistake was not Anne’s; it was his, in being too proud to propose to her again after he had become successful.
Thank you for sharing! I remember having tried cross-stitching as a child but unfortunately I never had the patience to finish the sampler and have never taken up needlework since but it is nice to see Jane Austen’s valuable piece of work!
So how many young Jane Austens were there in the world in 1787? And what are the chances of their work surviving 200+ years?
Also if you look at “Mifdeeds” it uses the Long S – it looks like an f – and that fell out of use during the early nineteenth C.