What’s On For The Jane Austen 250th Anniversary Year?

Venues across the country are celebrating the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, says Olivia Emily. Here’s how to get involved.

Jane Austen 250: What’s On Across The UK?

Hampshire

Jane Austen has ties to Bath, Reading and the Peak District, but her story began in Hampshire where she was born in 1775. Exhibitions, a country fair, Regency balls and writing festivals will mark her 250th birthday throughout the year (visit-hampshire.co.uk), while Winchester College will open the doors to No 8 College Street for the very first time on select dates; this small house is where the writer spent her final weeks of her life, dying there on 18 July 1817.

Reading

Nearby in Reading, Austen’s former school room will open for a series of special events and tours. Hidden in the Abbey Quarter, it’s considered the inspiration for Mrs Goddard’s School in Emma (visit-reading.com).

Chatsworth House

Peak District

In Pride and Prejudice, Miss Bingley gushes ‘there is not a finer county in England than Derbyshire’. Mr Darcy’s Pemberley is thought to be based on Chatsworth House, which played the part in the 2005 adaptation starring Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. It will play the role once more in a three-day celebration this summer; think talks, performances and Regency dress galore (13-15 June; chatsworth.org), with more events scattered across the year. Nearby Bakewell, thinly disguised as Lambton in Pride and Prejudice, is a must-visit.

Across the county border, the novelists’s transformative depiction of the English country house is explored in tandem with that of artist JMW Turner in Harewood House’s celebratory exhibition, Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter, featuring rare books, manuscripts, period costume, fashion plates, artistic tools, oil paintings and watercolours (2 May to 19 October; harewood.org).

Bath

But nowhere is more closely connected to Austen than Bath where her Georgian England is preserved in sandstone promenades, villas and the iconic Royal Crescent. The Jane Austen Festival consumes the city every September, and 2025 begs a bumper edition (12-21 September; janeausten.co.uk). Elsewhere in town, exhibitions, theatrical performances, tours, special menus and balls fill up the calendar.