Happy 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth! I was going to post this review of Jane Austen at Home on Friday, but I decided it would be more fun to celebrate on her actual birthday.

Book: Jane Austen at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley
Genre: Nonfiction
Publisher: St Martin’s Press
Publication date: 2017

Source:Hardback and e-book borrowed from library

Summary: Lucy Worsley is most widely known as a presenter of history programming on television, but she frequently published books on the same topic that go into greater detail. Jane Austen at Home is a companion volume to the television series Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors. I suspect that I watched that with my PBS Passport at one time. The only place it seems to be available now is on the BBC Select channel.

Since Jane Austen is very much associated with her own homes and with the homes that she invented for her characters, a biography that is structured around the places where Austen lived and stayed is very effective. We see her childhood home and learn about the people who surrounded her in that space — that included only some of her brothers but a remarkable number of boarding students. As she gets older, we learn about the places that inspired her writing and the places that were most conducive for the act of writing.

As we all know, she died too soon with stories that she still wanted to tell. The later chapters cover her final illness in rented rooms near a hospital. She was attended by her ever-loyal sister, Cassandra, but also by other women — a chosen family, a sisterhood.

At the end, we get to learn about Austen’s legacy and about which of these many homes can be seen today, so it doesn’t end on a sad note. The most important place associated with Jane Austen is Chawton and the book ends with this recommendation:

In the 1940s, the cottage in Chawton began its extraordinary second life as a shrine to Jane Austen, and Chawton House its life as a library dedicated to women’s literature. Both of them are well worth visiting today, and I urge you to go.

There’s a big red notice on the cottage’s website saying that they are completely booked for today’s birthday. That means that some lucky people will be there today.

Chawton House is celebrating Jane Austen’s birthday with a tour and tea. That, too, is sold out. Since I can’t be there, anyway, I’m happy to know that people will enjoy that experience.

Thoughts: It probably has to do with my time of life, with thinking about the coming year when I will turn 64, but I was moved by reflections on Mrs. Smith, an invalid character in Persuasion. Here’s a quote from Persuasionabout Mrs. Smith and her home:

limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bed-room behind…but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from Nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven.

With the miracles of modern nutrition and medicine, I can assume that I won’t need that disposition until I’m in my eighties, but it seems wise to cultivate it now.

Worsley argues that Jane Austen managed to take that way of being to heart.

Jane in decline became very conscious of the love of her family all around her. ‘Every dear Brother so affectionate & so anxious!’ she wrote, ‘and as for my Sister! — Words must fail me in any attempt to describe what a Nurse she has ben to me…I have so many alleviations & comforts to bless the Almighty for!’ Like Mrs Smith, Jane looked for good in evil.

Appeal: This was a splendid way to celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday, second only to reading her novels this year — I admire all of you who managed to do that. If you were one of those readers, Jane Austen at Home will make an excellent follow up to that project.