Jane Austen fans mark 250 years since the writer’s birth with a wave of parties

In her lifetime, Jane Austen was relatively unknown. The title page of Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, said simply it was “By a Lady”, and her other books also kept her name a secret. But today, Austen is one of Britain’s best loved writers, with a portrait of her face even appearing on some of the UK’s currency – the ten pound note.

Austen was born in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, in December 1775 – and this year, there are events across Britain to mark 250 years since her birth.

Most common among the celebrations are “balls”, complete with period dancing, like the parties depicted in Austen’s novels. One such Georgian costume ball was held in June at St Albans Museum and Gallery. Sitting 20 miles north of London, St Albans is in the county of Hertfordshire, the setting for Austen’s most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice. Guests at the St Albans ball were invited to wear 17th Century period dress – with ladies in full length gowns, and men in tailcoats.

Leading the dancing was Libby Curzon, who runs a small dancing company called Mrs Bennet’s Ballroom. Curzon teaches period dance to beginners, and named her business after the mother of the family in Pride and Prejudice, who dreams of finding her daughters a suitable husband.

Curzon says that in Austen’s day, people would have learned the dances before they came out to dance at a ball. “They wouldn’t have had somebody like me telling them what to do on the night,” she said. “They would have all been expected to know what to do, and it would have been really shocking… if you made a mistake during the dance.”

The dance teacher said that her classes and balls can be romantic, just like Austen’s books, with couples often meeting at her events. “It’s not like taking a look at them and swiping left or right,” she said. “You’ve actually got to move with them, hold hands, work out how to do the dance and… give eye contact,” she added. “So, it helps those little Cupid’s arrows.”

One of the attendees at the St Albans ball was Gauri Davies, who is from Australia, but lives nearby. Davies rereads Jane Austen books every year, and explained that going to a ball with her husband Peter was a “bucket list” event for her, because she loves Austen’s stories, and identifies with some of the characters.

“I think that she really gets to the heart of romance,” Davies said. “She talks about different classes, different amounts of privilege, people coming from different family backgrounds, and all of those themes are still so relevant today.”

Jane Austen died young – in 1817, when she was just 41 – meaning she was only able to complete six novels. But over two hundred years later, new adaptations of her work are regularly made and remade for stage and screen.

This year, British actors Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden and Olivia Colman are filming a new six-part adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for Netflix. That adaptation is one of many – including a Keira Knightly movie from 2005, and a celebrated BBC television series with Colin Firth from 1995. The author’s own life story has also fascinated film makers: this year, a new BBC drama called Miss Austen imagined Jane Austen’s life, alongside her sister Cassandra.

On top of that, Austen’s plots constantly inspire new fictional stories, as her work has influenced the whole romantic comedy genre. This year saw the release of the French romantic comedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, as well as the fourth film in the Bridget Jones franchise, whose first installment was originally inspired by Pride and Prejudice.

On London’s West End, a musical of the 1990s movie Clueless also started running this year, with a plot that takes its cues from Austen’s novel Emma. Austen’s plots have travelled across the world: the movies Aisha and Bride and Prejudice, both set in India, are derived from Jane Austen too.

Across Britain, there are parties and talks spread out throughout the year. Perhaps the biggest event of its kind is September’s Jane Austen Festival in Bath, a ten day celebration that will host thousands of devotees. Fans across the globe are planning their own tributes. The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) has 2,000 members, and has its own events in the U.S. and Canada.

JASNA also runs tours of England, including two special trips this year. They visit sites including Jane Austen’s birthplace, her grave in Winchester Cathedral, and Bath, a city where she lived for five years – as well as the sites of scenes from the novels. JASNA’s president Mary Mintz says that going to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, to see the writing desk where she wrote her books, is especially powerful.

“You can see her writing table there and know that’s where these incredible novels that have endured for so long were composed,” Mintz said, pointing out that Austen wrote all of her work in longhand, sometimes hiding it from guests who visited. “Seeing anything that Jane Austen touched is a very moving experience… it can be very emotional and it engenders a lot of respect for what she accomplished.”

Mintz feels that Austen’s work is a valuable document of the changing role of women in society. “Above all, I think she’s interested in the economic plight of women in her time period, because women were property, their property belonged to the males in their lives,” Mintz said. “And while she may be dealing with the marriage plot, she’s acutely aware of the fact that women in her era had to get married in order to have economic viability to survive.”

Of course, the love stories and family intrigue are important too. “Her stories go even deeper than the romance story or the marriage plot, they’re about making universal connections with others,” Mintz added. “What do people want most in life? They want to find someone to love and who loves them.”

John Mullan is professor of English at University College London, and author of the book What Matters in Jane Austen? Mullan thinks that while some might dismiss Austen as just a romance writer, she is one of the literary greats.

“I think only Shakespeare compares to her in this respect, that however often you’ve read one of her novels, when you read it again, it’s like a whole rediscovery,” Mullan said. “You see things which aren’t in your head, they’re on the page, they’re in her invention that you hadn’t noticed before.”

Mullan says Austen also compares to William Shakespeare in her global fame. “I’ve travelled quite a lot giving talks about Jane Austen in lots of different countries, and she is second only to Shakespeare, and not even always second to him, in her reach, in the extent to which people will have heard of her, know something of her plots – and very often, if they’re at all bookish people, have read her in translation, or seen the film adaptations of her stories,” he added.

Producer Biba Kang contributed to this report.