About the Project

The Imaginist’s Letters

The Imaginist’s Letters is a literary experience that brings Jane Austen’s world directly into your hands.

We recreate her surviving correspondence with painstaking care. Each piece is folded exactly as she folded them, sealed with wax wafers as she once did, and filled with her wit, warmth, and everyday life. Where only fragments remain, we include manuscript excerpts and context so you not only read Jane’s words, but also feel the tactile magic of letter writing in her time.

This is more than a collection. It is an invitation to step into the intimacy of Austen’s private world, where paper, ink, and imagination carried the weight of relationships and ideas.

Why Imaginist

The name The Imaginist’s Letters honors Austen’s inventive spirit. In Emma (1815), she used the word “imaginist” to describe Emma Woodhouse as “a person of extensive imagination.” The word is rare, and it surprised even her contemporaries, yet it perfectly reflects Austen’s originality and playful command of language.

“a person of extensive imagination”

Emma, 1815

As Professor Juliette C. Wells of Goucher College notes, “imaginist” was Austen’s own coinage, a literary spark that did not enter common speech but remains a testament to her creativity. Professor Wells has said she once considered “Imaginist” as a title for the exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen and the Power of Imagination. We choose it here to reclaim and celebrate that spark.

The Bigger Vision

This first twelve letter series is our pilot project. The funds raised here will help us take the next step.

No one has attempted this before. It will require licensing, access to collections, and meticulous reproduction down to the finest details.

If we succeed, for the first time in history Austen’s entire correspondence will be both preserved and experienced in the way she intended. Not as text on a screen, but as real letters arriving in the post.