The real-life places that inspired Jane Austen s most memorable fictional country houses countrylife.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from countrylife.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
AUTHORS with homes in Henley (or close by) abound, not least Mary Berry and Irvine Welsh. They appeared on the same evening at the same time but in different ve.
CHAWTON House has acquired a rare first edition of Jane Austen’s favourite poet William Cowper s Poems – the copy that was in her brother’s library, which she repeatedly visited. Thanks to the generosity of Friends of the National Libraries (FNL) and the Godmersham Lost Sheep Society (GLOSS), Chawton House has received a rare first edition of William Cowper’s Poems, published in 1782, which once belonged to Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight and very likely read by Austen herself during her visits to her brother’s Kent estate. Jane Austen visited her brother at Godmersham Park on six occasions over a fifteen-year period, from 1798 to 1813, staying there for a total of about ten months. She regularly used the library, her favourite room: ‘I am now alone in the Library’, she wrote to Cassandra in 1813, ‘Mistress of all I survey’. Jane was given a home at Chawton Cottage, in the grounds of Chawton House, with her mother and sister in 1809, by her brot