A step through the door of 40 Gay Street in Bath, United Kingdom, is like entering a time machine back to Regency Era England.
Characters from Jane Austen novels, women dressed in the flowy long dresses and bonnets or men donning long coats and top hats, usher guests to the second floor of the three-story apartment that houses the Jane Austen Centre to begin their tour on Oct. 19. Floral wallpaper and dark wood furniture stacked with some of Austen’s novels and wax candles greet the visitors as a television (the only thing out of place in the room) plays a video about her life.
The benches in the waiting room that Sunday afternoon were full, something a centre employee said has been typical this year because this year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birthday.
The employee was impersonating the character Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s most popular novel about a complicated relationship between an untitled woman and a nobleman. The employee was not allowed to reveal her actual name to media.
“There’s lots of people who still relate to [Austen],” Bennet said. “I often say her writing is timeless, and I think that’s one of the reasons it keeps being popular and will have resurgences.”
The number of Austen novels sold has increased this year, jumping to about 78,000 copies sold so far this year from about 64,000 copies sold in 2024, according to The Times of London. Bennet said the anniversary has also triggered the creation of new films and documentaries about Austen and her novels.
The centre has also hosted workshops, guest speaker visits, book fairs and double the amount of Regency-style balls this year to celebrate. About 4,000 people attended and participated in the September Jane Austen Festival’s Grand Promenade, Bennet said.
Although Austen only lived in Bath for about five years in total, many of her novels are at least partly set in the city, and the social scene she experienced after moving from the countryside shaped the society struggles she wrote about in her novels.
Austen’s novels have had an enduring popularity across the world that keep sales of her novels at a steady pace more than 200 years after their publications. Two of Austen’s self-described fans, sisters Sydney Starr, 69, and Collette Larson, 73, sip tea out of porcelain cups and enjoy jam-filled pastries from a three-tiered plate in the centre’s Regency Tea Room while talking about Bath’s “most famous resident.”
The sisters, who were visiting from the United States, were on a cruise but decided to extend their trip to stay in Bath for two nights and visit the centre. They said they were rereading some of her books in anticipation of their visit, with both of their favorite Jane Austen novels being Pride and Prejudice.
”Her way with words is truly astonishing,” Larson said. “She has such a way with conversation, with characterization, you really feel like you know her characters.”
Both sisters said knowledge of Jane Austen and her characters runs deep in their families. Snarr said her daughter-in-law is a big fan too, and she texted Snarr that she was “living my dream” while at Snarr was at the center. Larson said all five of her children know the name Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet’s love interest.
However, Bennet’s impersonator said the novels are often misinterpreted as “silly romances,” and she said it’s the “social commentary” and “outspoken women” that resonates with readers.
“Often it’s more, cleverly written by Jane, that it’s addressing in her time that women of a certain rank would have to marry in order to earn money so they could earn a living for themselves,” Bennet said. “The idea of the entail of the estate and things like that are referenced in a few of her books, and the idea that it was passed through the male line.”
Bennet said Austen criticized these ideas in the way she wrote about marriages and proposals, often marriages out of her novels and including several failed proposals. The character Elizabeth Bennet turned down two proposals in the novel, one by Mr. Darcy himself before later accepting his second one.
Female characters rejecting proposals mirrors Austen’s own life; she turned a suitor down 12 hours after initially accepting his marriage proposal because she did not love him. Austen never married before passing away at 41.
On a lighter note, the employee and two sisters said another reason Austen’s novel have stood the test of time is because they’re entertaining and relatable. Austen based many of her characters on people from her personal life, notably her seven siblings.
“She has an amazing sense of humor. She’s very witty; quite a few of her characters can even be quite sarcastic,” Bennet said. “She was very clever in that she was relating to emotions or people that you would recognize in real life.”
Snarr said the numerous adaptations of Austen’s novels into film have also brought in a different demographic of Austen fans.
“I think the movies that have been made about her books have been excellent, and that’s caused a whole new generation to just really fall in love with her characters,” Snarr said. “They have been so well cast and so well written and so well acted.”
Snarr and Larson said they plan on passing on their novels to their 21 grandchildren once they’re old enough and continue the enduring legacy of Jane Austen.
