Jane Austen is a phenomenon. Her writing, and the houses, museums and other locations linked to it, provide a window through which we voraciously look to a specific vision of the past. We’re tantalised by adaptations, exhibitions, and new readings of the author’s work that might bring us more Jane, and more information about a period during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that could, in some contexts, be labelled the Austenian era.
Austen was born in 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Austen (née Leigh). She spent the first 25 years of her life in Steventon, before living in Bath, Southampton and then at Chawton, in Hampshire. She also spent time travelling between friends and relatives, as well…