Today is Jane Austen's 250th Birthday! It's impossible to overestimate the impact Austen had on literature and the English consciousness. Her influence spreads far beyond the UK and has spawned films, books and plays. Her legacy is wide-ranging and long-lasting especially on the novel form and modern storytelling.
Everyone has their favourite Austen novel, character, film or TV adaptation. Unusually, I love Mansfield Park and my favourite TV adaptation is the 1980 production of Pride and Prejudice starring the wonderful Elizabeth Garvie.
In order to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday in 2025, I bought this beautiful book.
A Jane Austen Year charts the life, works and legacy of one of the world’s most beloved authors through the seasons of a year at Jane Austen’s House, the enchanting Hampshire cottage where she lived and wrote.
This delightful book offers a unique and intimate insight into Jane Austen’s world – her life, novels and letters, people and objects she knew, and of course her idyllic, inspiring home.
I've also discovered a recently published American book - Ladies in Waiting --edited by Adriana Trigiani, which is all about Austen's unsung characters. The minor, and not so minor, characters whose endings we don't know, and who leave us wondering "what happened? ....What next?" Hopefully the nine stories contained in the book will answer some of these questions.