The first blog post I ever wrote about Jane Austen appeared here on February 4, 2013 , nearly thirteen years ago. Today’s post is my 1,354 th —and my last.   I’m not wrapping up the blog because Jane Austen no longer makes waves. On the contrary: This next year is already shaping up to deliver the usual onslaught of Austen-related news: * Three new Austen-themed adaptations will hit screens large and small: The BBC’s ten-part series The Other Bennet Sister , based on a Pride

Jane Austen’s momentous 250 th  birthday—spoiler alert: it’s tomorrow!--can be celebrated anywhere, of course, but it must be extra special to celebrate it in a place steeped in authentic Regency history. In other words: Oh, to be in England this week, for events like these:   * Bath: The Jane Austen Festival’s Yuletide Jane Austen Birthday Ball was surely one of the most coveted tickets of the year, and no wonder: The ball was held in the storied Pump Room , a prime gatheri

My husband was sure there would be no gift shop at 8 College Street , the Winchester house where Jane Austen died, and which opened to...

Jane Austen’s House , the museum also known as Chawton cottage, is the most hallowed spot in Austen fandom: the place Jane Austen lived...

Fifty years ago, the ardent Janeite collector Alberta Burke--whose husband, Henry, would go on to co-found the Jane Austen Society of...

Jane Austen seems to have adored her older brother Francis. In the handful of letters that survive from their correspondence, she...

Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single...

I still remember the first time I watched the BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice .   At the time, my husband and I lived...

Jane Austen was a country girl, raised in a rural enclave of Hampshire, England, where the houses she lived in and the churches she...

A 250th birthday goes by many names . It can be called a semiquincentennial, a sestercentennial, a quarter millennial--even a...

Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England—her home for the last eight years of her life, and the place where she wrote or revised all six...

In these days of standardized computer fonts and software-assisted editing, one writer’s manuscript probably looks much like another’s....