Nobody has to tell us Janeites that 2025—aka the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth—is a special year to visit Austen sites in the UK. But for everyone else, there’s the New York Times.
“Jane Austen’s England” tops the newspaper’s annual “52 Places to Go” travel-recommendation list, whose 2025 iteration, as is customary, spans the globe: Greenland to Sydney, the Galápagos Islands to Taiwan, Nigeria to New York.
The Austen listing highlights many anniversary events that will sound familiar to my blog readers—although, to be fair, we’re all drawing from the same well.
It does strike me as slightly peculiar that the listing characterizes Austen’s England as lying in the country’s “southwest,” rather than south-central: Bath, in Somerset, is the only place with significant Austen-biographical associations that any Brit would consider west-ish, while the beating heart of Austen country (Steventon, Chawton, Winchester—even Southampton) lies in the more easterly territory of Hampshire.
And as long as we’re getting pedantic—remember, I have the T-shirt, so I’m entitled!—check out the Times’ characterization of Hampshire’s importance in Austen’s life: “As a novelist, she was most prolific in this bucolic setting.” Well, yes—but she spent only a handful of years living anywhere besides Hampshire. Where else was she going to write?
Still, this is ungracious of me. Let me try again. Welcome, non-Janeites, to Jane Austen’s England!
As long as we’re talking, though: This anniversary will be a busy time for us Janeites. So maybe you could put off your visit until 2026? I hear the Galápagos will be amazing this year.
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