Jane Austen's House

Jane Austen's House Review

Here, in an unassuming redbrick house, Jane Austen wrote Emma, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park, and revised Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. Now a museum, the house retains the modest but genteel atmosphere suitable to the unmarried daughter of a clergyman. In the left-hand parlor, there's a piano similar to the one Jane would play every morning before repairing to a small writing table in the family dining parlor—leaving her sister, Cassandra, to do the household chores ("I find composition impossible with my head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb," Jane wrote). In the early 19th century the road near the house was a bustling thoroughfare, and one traveler reported that a window view proved that the Misses Austen were "looking very comfortable at breakfast." Jane was famous for working through interruptions, but one protection against the outside world was the famous door that creaked. She asked that its hinges remain unattended to because they gave her warning that someone was coming. The museum often schedules readings and other special events, so call ahead.