I am jumping a bit late on the Jane Austen bandwagon with news of this ring. Coverage by Austen Authors and Austenonly is quite detailed and interesting, and I have very little to add to their information other than to offer the text of the PDF document put out by Sotheby’s. The ring, as well as original editions of Jane’s books, will be auctioned on July 10th.
I will say that this cabochon ring is lovely and made of a semi-precious stone, which makes sense, considering Jane’s economic situation. Amazingly, no one knew of this possession until quite recently, when it came time to be sold. The £30,000 price tag will be realized quickly, no doubt, and the number of people who will bid on this rare item will push the price well past its original estimate. Does anyone want to bet for how much this ring will eventually go? Let’s hope it will find a home in a British museum.
PROVENANCE
Jane Austen (1775-1817); her sister Cassandra (1773-1845); given in 1820 to her sister-in-law Eleanor Austen (née Jackson), second wife of Rev. Henry Thomas Austen (d. 1864); given in 1863 to her niece Caroline Mary Craven Austen (1805-1880, the daughter of Rev. James Austen); her niece Mary A. Austen-Leigh (perhaps first to her mother Emma Austen-Leigh, née Smith); her niece Mary Dorothy Austen-Leigh; given to her sister Winifred Jenkyns on 27 March 1962; thence by descent
LITERATURE
W. Midgley, ‘The Revd. Henry and Mrs Eleanor Austen’, Collected Reports of the Jane Austen Society: 1976-85 (1989), 86-91
CATALOGUE NOTE
An intimate personal possession of Jane Austen’s, hitherto unknown to scholars, that has remained with the author’s descendants until the present day. The stone is probably Odontalite, a form of fossilised dentine that has been heated to give it a distinctive blue colour, which came into fashion in the early 19th Century as a substitute for turquoise. It is an attractive but simply designed piece, befitting not only its owner’s modest income but also what is known of her taste in jewellery. Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, is given a gold chain by her cousin Edmund “in all the niceness of jewellers packing”, with the comment that when making his choice “I consulted the simplicity of your taste” – in contrast to the more elaborately decorated chain that she had been given by Mary Crawford. Similar sentiments are found in one of Austen’s letters when she informed her sister Cassandra that “I have bought your locket … it is neat and plain, set in gold” (24 May 1813).
On Jane’s death her jewellery, along with other personal possessions, passed to Cassandra, and she appears to have given a number of pieces as mementos. After Jane’s death Cassandra wrote to Fanny Knight that Jane had left “one of her gold chains” to Fanny’s god-daughter Louisa (29 July 1817), and she appears to have given the best-known piece of jewellery known to have belonged to her sister, the topaz cross given to her by her brother Charles in 1801 (see her letter to Cassandra, 26 May 1801), to their mutual friend Martha Lloyd.
Three years after Jane’s death, Cassandra gave the ring to Eleanor Jackson, on hearing the news that she was about to marry her brother Rev. Henry Thomas Austen. Henry had been Jane’s favourite brother and was closely involved in getting her novels into print. He lived locally to Cassandra and was by this time a clergyman (curate of Chawton from 1816, appointed perpetual curate of nearby Bentley in 1824), having previously gone bankrupt as a banker. Eleanor, his second wife, was the niece of the rector of Chawton, Rev. Papillon, and seems to have been known to the Austen family for many years.
Eleanor kept the ring for many years, bequeathing it to her niece Caroline shortly before her death. Caroline’s brother, James-Edward Austen-Leigh, wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen, and Caroline herself assisted this project by committing her own childhood memories of her aunt to paper, for her brother’s use. Caroline never married and the ring passed in turn to James-Edward’s daughter Mary, at which point it passed beyond the generation who had personal memories of Jane.
Click here for the PDF document
Also for sale:
Jane Austen's World 
What I wouldn’t give to own something that belonged to Jane Austen! How lovely. I do hope though that it does end up where we all could enjoy seeing it such as the British Museum. And first editions of her books? I could only dream!
Hi Vic – The stone actually appears to be odontolite. As I understand it from my research, the word cabochon doesn’t refer to a type of gem but a certain style of cutting a stone, one that is unfaceted, convex and polished. More on my post here:
http://austenauthors.net/jane-austens-ring
Thanks, Diana. As usual, when I write a post late at night I invariably make mistakes that require the services of a proof reader. Note to self: write early in the morning. I own two cabochon-shaped rings that are beautiful, one made of coral and the other of turquoise. I love the muted glow of the smooth stones.
‘odontolite n. fossil tooth or bone coloured blue by mineral impregnation; bone turquoise.
1819 Ann. Philos. 14 416 Odontolite Turquoise deserves to be treated as an object of zoognosy*.
1868 J. D. Dana Syst. Mineral. (ed. 5) 581 Most of the turquois (not artificial) used in jewelry..was bone-turquois (called also odontolite).
1951 C. Palache et al. Dana’s Syst. Mineral. (ed. 7) II. 950 Bone-turquois, also called fossil-turquois or odontolite.., is fossil bone or tooth and consists of microcrystalline apatite colored by a phosphate of iron (vivianite).’
* not in the OED but = ‘the study of animals’
[OED]
What a beautiful ring. If someone buys the ring, they should give it to either the Jane Austen Museum or the British Museum.
I have been through a lot in my lifetime and I don’t know what I would have done without Jane Austen’s books, movies and Masterpiece Theater’s productions of her work. She was a lady well ahead of her time. I have always thought it sad that we lost her when she was so young. Oh what more would we have had to love!!!!!!
‘cabochon, n. Etym: French: augmentative of caboche. A precious stone when merely polished, without being cut into facets or receiving any regular figure but that which belongs to the stone itself, the rough parts only being removed. This fashion is chiefly applied to the garnet (carbuncle), ruby, sapphire and amethyst. Chiefly attrib., as in cabochon shape, cabochan crystal, cabochan emerald, etc.
. . 1872 H. T. Ellacombe Bells of Church vii. 174 Under the foot of the cross is a large uncut crystal..at one side of this cabochon is a mitred figure . . ’
‘caboche, n. A fish; the Bull-head, or Miller’s Thumb.
c1425 in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) I. 641 Hic caput, caboche.‘
[OED]
Wish I had an OED, Christopher. Thanks.
What I have is access to the full OED Online through my public library membership. It may be that you can access all or some of it through your own library. See: http://www.oed.com/public/About/about
I do also have the 2 volume Shorter OED, which was the version most readers relied on before the full OED went online in c. 2000. This is available second hand quite cheaply: the 1993 4th edition is less than £25 here in the UK, post paid. It would be just as good as the latest version for studying Austen and her world.
Just as christopher was trying to say, the caboshon is the shape, not the stone. It looks like it could be turquoise.
Thanks, yes, I should have caught that sooner. I have a cabochon ring made of turquoise that I simply love.
If the Oxford English Dictionary is not clear enough for you, here’s the entry from the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms instead:
cabochon A smooth, convex, uncut gemstone.
Hi Christopher; it’s clear. My initial mistake was minor in that all I needed to do was move the word over in the sentence. Chalk it up to being tired and not proofing my writing closely.
That would be a dream come true to have a ring of hers. :) I could start the bidding at..*looks in purse* 10 dollars! Darn! I wonder what’s written inside the band.
I’m guessing now that the world knows about the ring, it would go over 75 thousand dollars.
Legend tells uv a reeng, jooled in anceent bone, eempregnated weeth ze unholy powers. Whomever dons zees reeng shall have all ze writeeng abeeleetees of ze Jane Austen! And her lesser known abeeleetee to controll ze dineesaurs.
That must be why Gollum wants preciousssss, then.
I, too, was thinking of how appropriate it would be for the ring to end up at a British spot associated with Jane Austen and her legacy, a place where we all could potentially view it. I’m American but I think the ring should be bought by a British organization that will put the ring on display, permanently, for all of us to enjoy. The British Library seems like a good place, though I can see it most at home at Jane Austen’s House Museum.
I will further predict that there will be shops, online or actual shops, will be making copies of this ring for people who want a copy. I think I’d be willing to buy one if it were made of quality material. Thanks for this posting!
The ring sold for 126,000GBP (with fees, 152,450GBP), something like $260K US…. See AustenOnly’s post at http://austenonly.com/2012/07/10/jane-austens-ring-sold/ for an auction viewer’s reaction. Or, read the blog entry at Sotheby’s: http://www.sothebys.com/en/inside/BlogHome/Collecting/Bibliofile/2012/07/jane_austen_in_irela.html – this is worth reading also to see the lovely miniature of a young Irishman who was a brief flirtation of hers (but who had to marry for money).