Jane Austen by the Sea

17 Jun 2017-8 Jan 2018

Overview

This new display will explore Jane Austen’s relationship with coastal towns, and life in Brighton during her time, to mark the bicentenary of her death. It will look at the seaside context of Austen’s plots and paint a picture of the leading resort of Brighton in the early 1800s, when it was a fashionable ‘watering place’ featured in novels like Pride and Prejudice. Although there is no clear evidence that Austen visited Brighton she included it in several of her works, and the display will reassess her relationship with the town in the light of a long-term misunderstanding arising from a hand-written 1799 letter