How to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. Here are exhibitions, events and more — happening across the UK — that mark the occasion.

Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen in Joe Wright's 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
(Image credit: Alamy)

Austen’s novels were published anonymously and read by a few thousand (including the Prince Regent), but she was almost unknown upon her death in 1817 and many of her books went out of print. It wasn’t until a biography written by her nephew came out in 1870 that her work took off, later achieving critical acclaim.

Now, we can’t escape Austenmania, evidenced not just by the reams of fan fiction (prequels, sequels and tales of bedroom antics) inspired by her work, but also by the number of UK-wide events organised this year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of her birth.

Read on for our top picks.


In Hampshire

The team at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire have organised a series of festivals themed around some of Austen's best-loved novels. Pride and Prejudice finishes today, but then there's Sense and Sensibility (May 1–11), Emma (July 12–20) and Persuasion (September 12–21), plus a Birthday Festival (December 13–21) and ‘Austenmania’, an exhibition celebrating adaptations. Click here for more information.


In Southampton

‘In training for a heroine’, with Austen’s travelling writing desk, runs at God’s House Tower in Southhampton, until February.


In Somerset

The Jane Austen Festival (September 12–21), plus a nautical Persuasion ball (May), a seaside Sanditon ball (June) and a Yuletide Birthday Ball (December) are all popping up at Bath's Jane Austen Centre.


In Hampshire

A life-size sculpture will be installed outside Winchester Cathedral and 8, College Street, where Austen spent her final weeks, will open to the public for the first time (June 4–August 30).

Across town, ‘Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels’ runs at The Arc on July 26–November 2


In Dorset

With Regency costume, letters and paintings, ‘Jane Austen: Down to the Sea’ at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery explores the author’s relationship with the coast (June 14–September 14.


On screen

Dolly Alderton is said to be writing a script for a new Netflix series of Pride and Prejudice. Miss Austen, a four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2021 bestseller, has been made by the BBC and begins February 2. Starring Keeley Hawes, it questions why Cassandra burned her sister’s letters. The BBC has also commissioned a 10-part series based on Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, giving spotlight to ‘odd one out’ Mary.


On the stage

Austentatious, the improvised comedy theatre production seen on the West End, will be touring the UK, with dates in York, Norwich, Buxton, Salford, Winchester, Bath and Leicester.


Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.