If next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth has an epicenter, it would surely be Jane Austen’s House, the place where Austen lived and wrote during the extraordinarily productive last eight years of her life.
The museum has already announced a busy schedule of Austen 250 events, starting in January with a six-day Pride and Prejudice festival and concluding in December with a weeklong birthday celebration.
And earlier this month, Jane Austen’s House unveiled its new permanent exhibition, “Jane Austen and the Art of Writing,” a multimedia look at all aspects of Austen’s craft. And boy, does it sound scrumptious.
“The exhibition celebrates Jane Austen as a ground-breaking and ambitious writer in the very house where she created her six beloved novels–directly linking Jane Austen’s creative process with the domestic space from which it came,” the museum’s press release explains. “It celebrates Jane Austen’s creative genius and show[s] how seriously she took her craft.”
The exhibit includes the topaz crosses that Charles Austen gave his older sisters, likely inspirations for the amber cross that William Price gives Fanny in Mansfield Park; a short film about the manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons; audio excerpts from her work, read by professional actors; a facsimile of a royalty check from publisher John Murray; and first editions of all six of Austen’s completed novels. Some of the items have long been part of the museum’s collections, but the context and presentation are new.
Not surprisingly, Jane Austen’s House is expecting 2025 to be a busy year; it’s distributing timed tickets and urging visitors to reserve far in advance. If I hadn’t already been tempted—and oh, I really had been—this new exhibition just might get me to book my flight to England.
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