Finding Jane Austen in Bath: A journey back to the 18th century to celebrate the author's 250th birthday

Reaching Bath , an hour and forty minutes from London, is more than a goal for Jane Austen fans. For those of us who have read her novels , biographies , and seen the numerous film and television remakes of her books , Bath and The Jane Austen Centre is a long-awaited dream come true.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of her birth , and it's astonishing to see how relevant her work remains. Bath is celebrating in style. The Jane Austen Festival will take place from Friday, September 12th to Sunday, September 21st this year. For ten days, the city will celebrate its most distinguished resident with dances, parades, readings, visits from writers and readers, and more.

Born in December 1775 and died in July 1817 at the age of 41, Jane was the second-to-last of the eight children of Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. She is credited with writing Lady Susan , her first novel, at the age of 18.

But let's take it one step at a time. Arriving in Bath is like stepping back to the 18th century . It doesn't matter that the hustle and bustle of the train packed with tourists is a 21st-century experience, because when you step off the train, your imagination takes you back to Austen's time. The Jane Austen Centre, a beautiful Georgian building, is located at 40 Gay Street and is very similar to the one at 25, where Jane spent a few months after her father's death.

Just a few minutes' walk from Bath Station, the museum is already visible, with a figure of Jane Austen at the entrance, and an 18th-century performer welcoming us . Upon entering, an actress dressed as Jane invites us to another room where she immerses us in the writer's family tree, her life in Bath, the books she wrote, and then gives us access to the permanent exhibition.

The texts in the Georgian rooms and the blue boards, which include quotations from Jane Austen's novels and letters, were written by the writer Maggie Lane, who has delved into the life and work of the author of Persuasion (a novel she began working on in 1815 but was published posthumously by her publisher Murray) and has written several books about her, such as A Charming Place, Jane Austen and Food and others.

In 1802, at almost 27 years old, Jane accepted a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg Wither, which she rejected the following morning and never married, causing tension between the proposer's family and her own. It was during their stay in Steventon that the Austens lived alongside the Bigg-Wither family of Manydown. After moving, Jane and her sister Cassandra returned to Manydown to visit their old friends and neighbors in the autumn of 1802.

Harris Bigg-Wither, 21, wanted to marry Jane, 27. Beyond the sale of her books and her prolific literary output, Jane lacked her own income (like Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice ) and relied heavily on her siblings.

In a desperate financial situation , Harris's impending inheritance was very attractive. It was the reason Jane accepted, but she immediately became unhappy, so she backed out and fled Manydown.

Some biographers argue that this real event may have influenced Jane's creation of the situations experienced by her characters, both in Pride and Prejudice and in Mansfield Park. Cousin Charlotte Lucas, in Pride and Prejudice , accepts Mr. Collins in a similar way to that of Jane and Mr. Bigg-Wither. Something that also occurs with the characters of Fanny Price and Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park .

The only documented fight between Jane and her sister Cassandra, heiress to her meager fortune upon her death , revolved around Fanny's treatment of Henry in that novel.

Some biographers have attributed to both her character Marianne Dashwood in Sensibility and Sensibility and that of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice some autobiographical connotations of Austen.

A tour of the temporary exhibition in a Georgian house is a journey back in time. To a time that Jane Austen "romanticized" (perhaps that was the connection back then), in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the political and social changes in England, as well as the conflicts, were highly significant.

At the beginning of the tour, Mr. Darcy, portrayed on the poster by the handsome Colin Firth, welcomes us. We immediately move into a room that, like the entire building, is painted in the colors of Austen's era. There we access her family tree . Visits to each space are always in small groups and for a reasonable amount of time.

In addition to painted portraits of Jane Austen, there are also some engravings. There are no daguerreotypes, which were invented only in 1839, when Jane had been dead for two decades.

A reproduction of her parents' marriage certificate and other pages written in Jane Austen's quill pen are on display in glass cases. There are even official announcements warning of a typhus epidemic, the disease that claimed the writer's life.

In 1817, after writing her will (under conditions that it would not be contested), Jane moved to Winchester for treatment for her illness, where she eventually died and her remains are buried.

On the 200th anniversary of her death in 2017, the Bank of England printed a commemorative banknote that poignantly noted that Jane Austen was "the mother of the great tradition of the English novel." There's a commemorative banknote there.

We then tour Jane Austen's writing desk . The space where she wrote with a quill pen, and visitors can leave their messages on small sheets of paper with the Jane Austen Centre letterhead, gratefully of course. The space replicates the one the writer used for her writing.

The Jane Austen Centre manages to stop time . The permanent exhibition features enlarged prints of Bath and its artists, portraits of Jane Austen, documents and furniture from her time, covers of her books ( she was an absolutely prolific writer ), and a play area where you can briefly pretend to be Lizzie Bennet on Mr. Darcy's arm.

Visitors can be any of Austen's characters for a moment , although most choose to be Lizzie Bennet because the corporeal figure is Mr. Darcy.

It's a shame that the space doesn't include officer Frederick Wentworth, a 19th-century gentleman who fell in love with Anne Elliot in Persuasion , for whom he fought battles and built a career, only to return to confess that he had never stopped loving her and propose marriage.

The Jane Austen Centre also offers walking tours of the sites Jane walked and where she imagined her now world-famous stories. The tours take us to places where she used to shop and the settings of the two novels set in Bath: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .

Why does Bath have the Austen Centre? Austen's first documented visit to this wonderful city dates back to 1797, when she was 22 , where she stayed for six weeks with her sister Cassandra and her mother.

The Centre's printed guide states that, having lived the early years of his life in the quiet Hampshire village, the elegant ways of Bath may have provided him with an exciting backdrop for his novels.

Two years later, Jane returned to Bath . On that trip, she was invited by her brother Edward, who had gone to the city's famous Roman Baths to recover his health. Jane happily accepted because it allowed her to research the city and its surroundings, all of which she later included in her novel Northanger Abbey .

Some of her biographers have said that something about Bath sparked her imagination , so much so that upon returning from that trip, she wrote to Cassandra that she had thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Austen is known to have lived in Bath for five consecutive years.

At that time, Bath was a sort of resort town in England, famous for providing comfort and entertainment to families who could afford it. It was such a vibrant city that Jane Austen reflected it in her literature.

In Northanger Abbey , Catherine Morland's character runs from Milsom Street towards Royal Crescent, a landmark very close to the now central Union Street, where the emotional reunion between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth takes place in Persuasion :

“True love is constant and powerful, and undaunted by any adversity,” writes Austen in that beautiful novel, our favorite, although Pride and Prejudice is also a favorite.

There is no doubt that, regardless of where her remains rest, Bath influenced Austen's writing , and her stories seem to reflect several of her personal experiences in the city.

Like her character Catherine Morland, Jane Austen surely once said to her sister Cassandra: “Oh! Who can ever tire of Bath? I sincerely believe I shall always speak of Bath when I come home. I like it so much.”