The exhibition additionally looks at Jane Austen’s letters and how letterwriting wove its way into her novels, using large-scale facsimiles of letters drawn from the museum collection to illustrate the display.
Also featured is a specially commissioned short film looking at how the manuscript of The Watsons - one of Jane Austen’s very few surviving manuscripts, held by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford – reveals a lot about Austen’s writing process, from the size and date of her paper to how she attached paper patches with pins to allow for re-writes.
Elsewhere there is a focus on the publication of Jane Austen’s novels and her relationships with her publishers, Thomas Egerton and John Murray. It displays facsimile items from the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland, including Murray’s account book and a cheque made out by him to ‘Miss Jane Austin’. Also on display is a newspaper from 31 October 1811 containing the publication announcement of Sense and Sensibility.
Lizzie Dunford, Jane Austen’s House Director said: “Jane Austen and the Art of Writing is a landmark new exhibition for not just the museum, but for lovers of Austen’s work around the world. Years in the planning, it brings together the extraordinary books and objects that make the collection at Jane Austen’s House so unique, and so special, and will allow visitors to be quite literally surrounded by the books and objects that influenced Austen, and the groundbreaking, era-defining novels that were written from her final home. It is a treasury; of words, of ideas, and of the eternal brilliance of Austen’s imagination.”
Jane Austen’s 250th birthday falls on December 16, 2025 and Jane Austen’s House will be celebrating throughout the year with additional exhibitions, events and a series of themed festivals.
