Happy Birthday, Miss Austen!

Dec 16

On the occasion of the lady Jane Austen's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, I offer my gratitude for the joy and beauty that her work and her words brought to my own life.

Dear Miss Austen,

I woke this morning with a smile knowing that today, December 16, 2025, marks two and a half centuries since your fortuitous birth. And I gave thanks for you and the six – yes, six! – volumes you crafted at that wee table in your family home. You, a spinster no less, with your brothers and sisters for company and sometimes lacking for the comforts of a lavish life (something I know a bit about), but contented with good company, a pot of tea, and ink to spill across the page.

And yet you published your books as "a lady" – not taking credit for the tales of Hampshire, oh, and Bath, and the ladies and gentlemen we meet in parlors and at the roadside, wooing and courting and longing for one another. But Emma, Elizabeth, and Elinor, your greatest heroines, continue to romp through our imaginations together with Fanny, Catherine, and Anne, and through them you have achieved immortality though you hid behind anonymity.

In our era anonymity seems quaint, but I suspect that your creatures – especially those characters less socially-adept like Mr. and Mrs. Elton and the less-than-honorable John Willoughby – might also have sat behind you at church or popped into the local millinery shop as you stood there admiring ribbons and dreaming of a new bonnet. You gave the game away, clever girl, when you wrote, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?"

Even here more than two centuries later we recognize the pompous, the scandalous, those with scathing tongues that wag. Perhaps we know them more for who they are having encountered them on your pages in your prose, for though they are dressed in Regency attire, those ladies and their gentlemen do not differ all that much from the rogues and gossips of today. Yours, however, are more refined though their barbs cut just as deep.

Miss Austen, I thank you for the kindness of Emma, the grace of Elizabeth, the generosity of Elinor, the imagination of Catherine, the steadfastness of Anne, and the patience of Fanny. In them you have given us women who reflect the intelligence, wit, and joy we each possess while centering your books around the days of women – reflecting the inherent value and beauty of a woman's internal life. They are the women with whom we long to be friends – and perhaps we also long to be friends with you, dear Miss Austen.

I close this missive thankful that I have romped through meadows, stood along the walls of ballrooms, and walked the seaside with these beautiful women many times over the years. They are a comfort when the world feels too heavy and too big and too small all at once. We meet in the Hampshire of your pages where the tea is always hot and the intentions earnest. They live in my imagination – together with you – a company of beauty, rich in love and joy.

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

Yours, always, in thanks,

Angela

Dear reader,

If you are a Jane Austen devotee — or perhaps you have not yet had the pleasure — let me introduce you to a few of my favorite ways to indulge in her words and her world.

Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility: if you haven’t read her, or read her in awhile, start with these three. There’s a reason we are celebrating her 250th birthday, and it starts here!

The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama: with Clare Foy and Emma Thompson amongst others. This is a wonderful audiobook set to which I have listened many times.

The Jane Austen BBC Radio Drama Collection: Six BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatisations: another audiobook (abridged) version of each of her books with Benedict Cumberbatch narrating

Jane Austen Lego Set: a perfect project while listening to an audiobook, perhaps?

Jane Austen was a great gardener, as were many people of her era. This article is a great read about her gardens and what she says about gardening in her books. And her home in Hampshire is a museum which has a lovely website and a virtual tour of the house and grounds. Someday I will make a pilgrimage!

And the movies and television series… everyone has a favorite, frankly. Mine is Sense and Sensibility (1995) with Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, and Imelda Staunton — amongst so many others.

And because I LOVE Jane Austen so much, I designed a series of shirts with quotes from her books. Perfect for the garden — or for snuggling up with a good book! You’ll find them in my shop, and here’s a peek:

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