Jane Austen 250

2025 marked the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and we celebrated throughout the year with brand new exhibitions, special events, collaborations and more.

Our celebratory festivals!

Throughout 2025, we hosted a series of festivals to celebrate Jane Austen’s special anniversary year.  Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Pride and Prejudice Festival in January; our Spring Fling: Sense and Sensibility Festival in May; our Emma Festival in July; our Persuasion & Poetry Festival in September and our final festival, Jane Austen’s Birthday Celebration in December.

Our podcast!

When we kicked off our 2025 celebrations for Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, we were delighted to launch our new podcast!

A Jane Austen Year is a mindful, soothing and uplifting podcast that transports you to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton… Each month, join us on a seasonal journey through Jane Austen’s novels, the story of her life and the world she lived in. Discover scenes, letters, recipes, and objects from the museum collection, bound together with original music and sounds recorded in the House itself.

Each episode was recorded by the people who work at Jane Austen’s House, caring for this special place and protecting it for future generations.  Episodes aired on the 1st of the month.  Catch up with the series here!

This series accompanies our book A Jane Austen Year– find it on our website.

Austenmania! exhibition

In January 2025, we launched a new exhibition, supported by the BBC and De Montfort University. Austenmania! looked back to 1995 – an astonishing year of film and TV adaptations that changed the Austen landscape forever. 30 years on from this extraordinary year, and 250 years on from Jane Austen’s birth, we celebrated the four landmark film and TV adaptations that were first seen in 1995: Andrew Davies’ seminal adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the BBC starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle; Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s stunning big-screen adaptation of Sense and Sensibility; BBC Screen Two’s quiet, unhurried adaptation of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds; and the frothy masterpiece that is Clueless! – a brilliant reimagining of Emma set in the L.A. hills.

The exhibition showcased two original Pride and Prejudice transmission scripts from the Andrew Davies Archive and handwritten notes on the production from the Sue Birtwistle Archive, on loan from De Montfort University. Production shots, original cinema posters, merchandise and original press cuttings also featured in the exhibition. Austenmania! ran throughout 2025.

In the summer of 2025, legendary Screenwriter Andrew Davies and Script Editor Susie Conklin visited Jane Austen’s House to reminisce about the making of the extraordinary BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Filmed in the beautiful and intimate surroundings of the Drawing Room, the film also includes leading cast-members Crispin Bonham-Carter and Susannah Harker who joined the live audience and shared their happy memories of the production. It was chaired by Justin Smith, Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University.

Jane Austen and the Art of Writing

In October 2024, we were thrilled to open our brand-new permanent exhibition, Jane Austen and the Art of Writing, which celebrates and centres Jane Austen as a ground-breaking and ambitious writer in the very house where she created her six beloved novels. This inspirational exhibition, directly links Jane Austen’s creative process with the domestic space from which it came. It showcases treasures from our extraordinary collection, including objects that inspired Jane Austen and a full set of first editions of her novels – rarely seen together. The exhibition uses facsimiles of surviving manuscripts, touch objects, film and audio to provide a hands-on experience for visitors and to explain Jane Austen’s writing process. This permanent exhibition is free with House entry. 

Order our Book!

As part of our celebrations for Jane Austen’s 250th birthday next year, we published a book – and you can order your copy now or find it in our Gift Shop!

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.

Dip into Jane’s letters to her sister, discover the story of the publication of Pride and Prejudice and the ‘topaze crosses’ that inspired Mansfield Park, and enjoy recipes that Jane herself would have known.

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.

A new look for a special year!

We once again worked with world-renowned design agency Pentagram to create a new visual identity for the celebratory year. The design is inspired by Jane Austen’s love of nature and the outdoors and references a number of key plants and objects, including the beautiful Blush Noisette rose which frames the doorway of the House and was introduced to Europe in 1817, the year of Jane Austen’s death. The design also includes an oak leaf and acorn, referencing a Wedgwood dinner service owned by the Austen women at Chawton, which Jane mentioned in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811: ‘On Monday I had the pleasure of receiving, unpacking & approving our Wedgwood ware. It all came very safely & upon the whole is a good match, tho’ I think they might have allowed us rather larger leaves, especially in such a Year of fine foliage as this.’ Jane Austen, 6 June 1811

The oak leaf in the design is also a nod to an oak tree in the museum garden which is a descendent of one planted by Jane Austen over 200 years ago. Also referenced in the design is the ‘Chawton Leaf’ wallpaper that hangs in the Dining Room, where Jane Austen’s writing table sits. The wallpaper was recreated from a fragment of historic wallpaper discovered in the Dining Room in 2018, that has been dated to the time when Jane Austen was living at the House.

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who visited us – both in person and virtually – during this special anniversary year.  We loved celebrating with you! Please sign up to our newsletter and follow us on social media to discover all the exciting exhibitions and events we have planned during 2026 and beyond!