Today is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death and there are many events to commemorate her death. Earlier this year I wrote about The Spirituality of Jane Austen by Paula Hollingsworth, a combination of a biography and an analysis of Jane Austen’s works from the point of how they reveal her spirituality.
Currently I’m reading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley,
telling her life story through the places she lived, places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester. Lucy Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a ‘life without incident’.
Jane Austen died in this house in Winchester
and is buried in Winchester Cathedral’s north nave aisle.
BooksPlease 
I have Lucy Worsley’s TV doc. on that book to watch. Planning to watch it with my grand-daughter when she’s here in the summer hols. I do like LW’s bookish docs. and wish the BBC did more book docs. in general.
LikeLike
I watched the TV doc too – excellent, almost as good as visiting the houses and places for yourself.
LikeLike
That book sounds really interesting, Margaret. Austen has captured people’s imaginations, and had a lot of influence, for years. I find that fascinating in itself.
LikeLike
Margot, it is fascinating – helped I think, by films and TV in recent years, but I think I read somewhere that her books have always been in print (maybe I imagined that).
LikeLike
The first lit-crit books I ever bought was a set of essays commemorating the 200th anniversary of her birth–it wasn’t that long ago. She lived such a short life. Sometimes it’s amazing to me what she crammed into those last few years of her life.
LikeLike