It is a truth universally acknowledged that any writing about Jane Austen must begin with “It is a truth universally acknowledged …”.
The opening line to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has been repeated and parodied so many times it borders on cliché … although the original author was anything but.
Jane Austen herself was an original, but not necessarily a trailblazer. The novel was a new form of media in the late 18th and early 19th century, but women writers existed before her: Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney. Although many published anonymously or under pseudonyms, some successfully penned the bestsellers of their day.
Yet it’s Austen who is still taught in schools, who is read and re-read by fans, and who is utterly beloved by readers and Hollywood alike. She even appears on the £10 note, one of only a few women to have graced the UK’s currency (nurse Florence Nightingale and social activist Elizabeth Fry being the others, if we don’t count the Queen).
I’ll leave the question of why her work has managed to strike a chord with audiences for over 200 years to those who have done the research and have the citations to prove it. Indeed, the BBC series Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius tries to answer this very question with actors and writers explaining what makes her so special.
Instead, consider these the musings of a fan who has been on my own journey through Jane Austen Country this year, both figuratively through her works and literally with a visit to Hampshire.
And what a year to do it! Jane Austen was born 16 December 1775, and the UK has been commemorating the 250th anniversary of her birth with celebrations across the country as part of Austen 250. (If your fandom is more artistically inclined, the painter J.M.W. Turner also happened to be born in the same year, so art museums are likewise having festivities for Turner 250).
As a result, MrElaineous and I have immersed ourselves in the current round of Austenmania.
In May, we attended an excellent lecture in Bath given by television presenter Lucy Worsley. Lucy is one of those people who has done the research and literally written the book on the topic. In this case, the book is Jane Austen at Home. She traces Jane’s life through the houses she lived in from birth (her father’s rectory in Steventon, Hampshire) through to her early death (rented rooms in Winchester, where her family had taken her for medical care).
We watched the aforementioned Rise of a Genius, which shines a spotlight on Jane’s life story, from the people who influenced her to the business dealings gone wrong that could have derailed her career before it had even begun.
This sent us down the rabbit hole of re-watching the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice and 1995 version of Persuasion. In case you’re wondering, 1995 was another busy year for Miss Austen. Both Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility and Alicia Silverstone’s Clueless, the modern re-telling of Emma, were released in cinemas that year. Helen Fielding also began publishing Bridget Jones’ Diary as a newspaper column in February of 1995, eventually leading to the character of Mark Darcy who was inspired by Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy, who in turn was played by Colin Firth in the film adaptation. It’s all very meta.
Back in the present, we even managed to attend an evening of questions and answers with Pride and Prejudice screenwriter Andrew Davies over Zoom, who has more energy at 88 than I do at half the age. What came across in the discussion was his fascination with the social commentary in Austen’s writing.
Jane used the safety of fiction to covertly showcase the plight of women, the hypocrisy of the class system, and how Britain’s wealth (such as the Bertram estate in Mansfield Park) depended on slavery. Despite the commonly held belief her books are about genteel romances amongst the middle and upper classes, Jane managed to smuggle pointed political critiques and razor-sharp observations into polite drawing-room conversations.
All the puzzle pieces then fell into place in September when we paid a visit to Chawton, Hampshire to see where Jane Austen spent the last 8 years of her life. This was the greatest period of stability in her later years, and it saw her write Emma, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey, while also revising and publishing Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park.
But first, a brief digression into Jane Austen’s background.
Jane was one of eight children of the clergyman George Austen. The Reverend Austen kept a well-stocked library and allowed his children to read whatever they wanted … including the newfangled (and oft-criticised) story-telling device known as the novel (because it was new. Which, admittedly, is not the most creative name for a type of creative writing).
Jane’s brother Edward caught the attention of the Austens’ well-off relatives, Thomas and Catherine Knight. They formally adopted him, which allowed him to inherit two large estates: Godmersham Park in Kent and Chawton House in Hampshire.
Meanwhile, the death of George Austen in 1805 saw Jane, her mother, and her sister Cassandra fall on hard times. During this time period, women of their class (the pseudo-gentry) typically couldn’t work and were reliant on the men in their lives to provide for them. Over the next several years, they bounced from house to house, living with family and friends or in cheap accommodation in Bath.
In 1809, Edward Austen Knight was finally able to offer the women use of a former bailiff’s house in Chawton, just down the street from his estate of Chawton House. It was here that Jane Austen entered what was to be the most incredibly productive period of her writing career.
These two properties—Chawton House and Chawton Cottage (now the Jane Austen House Museum)—sit at the heart of Austen Country. They also sit an hour and a half (ish) from where I live in Wiltshire, which is the only excuse I can give for having not made the pilgrimage during the twenty-one years I’ve called the UK home. It’s just far enough away not to be on my mind when deciding where to go on a day trip.
But a combination of factors encouraged the visit: Austen 250 and a one-man show by Adrian Lukis.
We started at Chawton House itself. This is a liveable great house, comfortable but not overbearing. During our visit, they had an excellent exhibition about women writers and highlighted the raw material that would have inspired Jane to create her novels, from theatre and local lending libraries to the aforementioned social commentary.
The gardens at Chawton House are spectacular … or would have been if it had been a bit earlier in the year. The flowers had gone over, but I can imagine they looked incredible throughout the spring and summer. It was here where MrElaineous made the quip about there being a quote around every corner in Jane Austen Country. He wasn’t exaggerating.
Over the years, Jane Austen Societies and individual supporters from around the world provided funding for benches and decorative quotes that dotted the landscape. My favourite is this one from a letter: “I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.”
During her talk, Lucy Worsley described Jane Austen as “oozing jokes”; it seemed like Jane just couldn’t help herself by dropping little witticisms or turns of phrase into her correspondence. This one in particular feels like Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch … just 150 years earlier in a horticultural setting.
After leaving the garden, we walked down to the church where Jane Austen’s mother and sister are buried. Jane herself lies down the road in Winchester Cathedral. Not because of her fame as an author; indeed, the memorial stone over her grave makes no mention of her writing. Instead, it was another brother, the Reverend Henry Austen, who was able to make arrangements for her burial.
We had a little time to kill before the play, so we ventured into the village of Chawton itself to visit the cottage where Jane Austen actually lived. It was here that we ran into a group of friends wearing shirts that read “Obstinate, Headstrong Girls”. I took a photo of them (and got their permission to share it on this blog) while marvelling how a 250-year-old author has continued to inspire such devotion (and merchandise).
We returned to Chawton House for the one-man play Being Mr Wickham because, after all, Adrian Lukis played the scoundrel himself in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. The play itself was very good, with Mr Lukis leaning into the idea of Wickham being the ultimate unreliable narrator. However, it was one of the audience members who caught my attention during the post-production Q&A.
She introduced herself as being from Kazakhstan and wanted to make sure that Mr. Lukis understood how much the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice meant to her. She said that she watched the series on bootleg discs in the early days of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union, and it was, in part, what taught her English and how life could be different elsewhere.
I don’t know about universal truths, but it was the perfect illustration of how Austen’s writing transcends cultures and time periods. Whether this year for Austen 250—or any other time in the future—I think that’s certainly worth celebrating.
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I really enjoyed your post. Thank you
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Thanks, Severa! Wishing you a very happy 2026!