Museums And Archives

The Most Tiresome Place in the World: Jane Austen and Bath

Jane Austen hated the City of Bath. Well, she didn’t exactly hate it, but she certainly didn’t love it. In 2025 we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, a unique opportunity to explore the complicated relationship she had with Bath at one of its most famous buildings, No.1 Royal Crescent. In a year when many events in the UK will mark this important anniversary, we want to look through a different lens, and explore why Austen disliked the city that is now an indivisible part of the Austen 'brand'. Using letters, contemporary responses and borrowing the only manuscript she ever wrote in Bath, an exhibition, a writer in residence and learning activities, will reveal the highs and lows of Austen's time in the City. Creating a legacy of looking beyond the comfortable costume dramas to see how turbulence and loss cast a long shadow over Austen and Bath.