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Home / Literature and art / Kelly Clarkson bought Jane Austen's ring for 152,450 pounds in 2012, and Britain barred…
Case file s1846 · Literature and art · 1817
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1817
Jane Austen: Portrait of Jane Austen in watercolor and pencil
Jane Austen. Cassandra Austen. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
18 July 1817
Place
Winchester, England
Field
novelist · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
English law (export licensing, Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art) · Common law
Historical event
The 2012 Sotheby's sale of Austen family jewellery
Religion
Jane Austen: Protestant and Anglican (recorded as Anglicanism on Wikidata; Anglican writers, English Anglicans on Wikipedia)
Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workIndustry and empireEuropeUnited Kingdom

Kelly Clarkson bought Jane Austen's ring for 152,450 pounds in 2012, and Britain barred export until a museum raised the same sum

Jane Austen's gold and turquoise ring is one of only three known pieces of her jewellery. Papers show it passed to her sister Cassandra, then to Eleanor Austen, wife of Henry Thomas Austen, and stayed in the family. At a Sotheby's sale in London in July 2012 singer Kelly Clarkson bought it for 152,450 pounds, outbidding seven others including Jane Austen's House museum, and planned to take it to Texas. Culture minister Ed Vaizey placed a temporary export bar on it, giving UK buyers until the end of December 2013 to match the price. An anonymous donor gave 100,000 pounds in August 2013 and the museum had until December to raise a further 49,000. In September 2013 Clarkson accepted the museum's offer. The ring went on display at the museum in Chawton, Hampshire, on Valentine's Day 2014†. In 2026 it remains in the museum.

What the law took from it

A famous person's keepsakes can leave a family for a stranger at auction and come back only if a state bar and public money intervene.

Sources
  1. museumsassociation.orgScholarship
  2. amp.cbc.caPress
  3. janeaustens.housePress
  4. janeaustensworld.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Kelly Clarkson bought Jane Austen's ring for 152,450 pounds in 2012, and Britain barred export until a museum raised the same sum,” story s1846, https://www.celebrity.estate/jane-austen-1817, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workIndustry and empireEuropeCommon lawUnited Kingdom