Ladies of Leisure

Sunday 14th September - 11:00

Do you fancy a spot of Regency cricket? Or is lolling on the sofa with a book more your thing?

This delightful talk from the creator of Bad Girls & Bonnets and Ladies of a Certain Age explores pleasures and pastimes in Jane Austen’s era, from ambling in the shrubbery to enchanting embroidery.
Historian Lucy Adlington will showcase marvellous original fashions for sport and dancing, and amuse you with hilarious readings from Austen’s novels.
This event is being kindly sponsored by the Apex Hotel Bath.

Venue: Banqueting Room, Guildhall, High St, Bath BA1 5AW

Tickets £18

The Fee Tail and Female Fury in Austen's Legal World

Sunday 14th September - 13:00

Unravel the legal knots in Austen's drawing rooms! Was Jane Austen simply penning romantic fairytales, or was she subtly wielding the sharp quill of a proto-feminist legal mind?

Join Nicola McNulty for a fascinating exploration into the oppressive laws governing women's property rights in Georgian and Regency England. Discover how Austen, with her intelligent grasp of intricate legal concepts like the dreaded fee tail, cleverly embedded a quiet but powerful battle cry for women's rights within the fabric of her most beloved novels.

Venue: Brunswick Room, Guildhall, High St, Bath BA1 5AW

Tickets £13

'In want of a wife': Miss Lister of Shibden Hall and her five-million-words of Regency life and desire for a wife

Sunday 14th September - 14:30

Over 200 miles away, another trailblazer of the Regency era, Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax, was busy managing her estate, travelling, climbing mountains and having relationships with other women. Whilst Anne Lister never published, she wrote over five million words detailing her life in Georgian England and was a prolific reader.

Join historian and author Angela Clare as she shares the story of Anne Lister. Find out if Lister read Austen, what she made of Bath when she visited in 1813 and if she ever got her happy romantic ending, albeit a very different one from Austen's novels. In Anne Lister’s case, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single [wo]man in need of a good fortune must be in want of a wife'.

Venue: Brunswick Room, Guildhall, High St, Bath BA1 5AW

Tickets £16

Janette Wilkin - costuming talk

Monday 15th September - 10:00

TBC

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

The Watsons with Rose Servitova

Monday 15th September - 11:30

In her talk on The Watsons, Rose Servitova explores what inspired her to complete Jane Austen’s unfinished novel - from fandom and her fascination with Austen to the challenge of capturing Austen's distinctive voice. She will discuss her writing process, her love of authenticity and why humour is key. Finally, she explains why The Watsons is ripe for screen adaptation.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Girls Behaving Badly: Jane Austen's Wicked Women

Monday 15th September - 14:00

"Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy and fearless." Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen’s novels depict a genteel world of country houses in which everyone is expected to be on their best behaviour. But what happens when this world of manners and morals breaks down? During Jane Austen’s lifetime, women – and their fictional counterparts - were expected to be virtuous and biddable; what happens when, like Lydia Bennet, they are not?
This entertaining talk explores how far Austen subverted her readers’ expectations and rebelled against what was expected of women in her day. From the riotous and rebellious girls that populate her teenage writings to the more famous heroines of her mature works, this is an enlightening and surprising look at the life and work of a woman who once declared ‘If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it.’ 

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £14

Austen Fantasy House Hunt: The architecture we don’t see in Jane Austen

Monday 15th September - 16:00

The streets and houses in Jane Austen’s novels are essential to defining the people who occupy them, but what about the buildings the characters never actually visit? Join Dr Amy Frost as she explores the buildings that are not described by Austen, and invites you to help construct these fictional homes. Audience participation welcome, no drawing skills required, just bring your imagination.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Jane Austen's Portrait - with Melissa Little

Tuesday 16th September - 12 noon

This talk charts the extensive research made by forensic artist portrait painter, Melissa Dring, when commissioned to produce a new likeness of Jane Austen in 2001. Chasing all possible clues, not only the Austen family look, but such intimate details as Jane’s underwear, were equally crucial to the final lifelike image. This, of course, also had to convey something of Jane’s character and reveal her sparkling wit and wisdom…Did Melissa succeed? Judge for yourselves!

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Births, Marriages and Deaths

Tuesday 16th September - 14:00

This lively presentation will explore births, marriages and deaths in the Regency era, seen through the prism of Jane Austen’s life and works. This account of how Jane came into this world, and left it, poses the question: What would her legacy have been if either she or her sister Cassandra had married?

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Assembly and Diversity in Jane Austen’s Bath

Tuesday 16th September - 16:00

Jane Austen’s Bath was a city of spectacle, sociability, and surprising diversity. This talk explores the vibrant world of Georgian Bath and the radical inclusivity of its world-famous assemblies. From fashionable elites to cross-dressing non-conformists, and from plantation owners to abolitionists and people of colour, discover the melting pot of identity that made up Georgian Bath, and how it shaped the world that Austen knew and wrote about.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Miss Austen Investigates - book talk

Tuesday 16th September - 18:00

From P.D. James to Jessica Bull, Jane Austen’s classic novels have influenced generations of crime fiction writers. In this talk, you’ll hear more about the elements of mystery in Austen’s own novels, as well as the true crimes which touched her life and inspired the Miss Austen Investigates series.

Venue: No. 1 Royal Crescent, Bath BA1 2LR

Tickets: £12.00 for the talk or £24.00 for the talk and a signed, hardback copy of Miss Austen Investigates: A Fortune Most Fatal (RRP £16.99)

Dye and colour in Regency life

Wednesday 17th September - 10:00

Learn about colour in Regency times. Trace the creatively descripted colours of fashions in the journals of the time back to the ancient art and alchemy of natural colours. This lecture will explore the fascinating sources including, plants, spices, animals and elements used. The complex processes, which sit somewhere between science and magic, used to consistently create colours across the spectrum. Exploring how these colours were named and sold through fashion journals before finally looking at the practical issues of wearing and maintaining naturally coloured clothing.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Living with Jane Austen

Wednesday 17th September - 11:30

Janet Todd has been reading Jane Austen for many decades, observing how her work alters through the lens of evolving taste and cultural fashion: also through changes in herself as she passes through different periods of life.
Recently, Janet Todd has come to appreciate the bracing, humorous way Austen deals with bodies and their disorders--including her own. Engaging with the medical buzzword of the times—‘nerves’—through her characters, Austen investigates the subtle interaction of mind and body, the discomfort that seeps from one to the other. Finally, Janet Todd looks at Austen’s private letters where she exposes her own ‘nervous’ quality.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

250 years before Jane Austen: a short and partial version of British history

Wednesday 17th September - 14:00

In this fully illustrated talk, Director of Jane Austen’s House takes us back in time to explore the seismic political, religious, and social changes that shaped the world that Jane Austen was born into in 1775. From the Mary Queen of Scots to the South Sea bubble and beyond, we will explore ten key events that shaped both the writer and her world.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

The Worlds of Jane Austen - with Helena Kelly

Wednesday 17th September - 16:00

The Worlds of Jane Austen takes a fresh look at Jane Austen’s life, inspirations and legacy, drawing on the latest research in an accessible and lively way.
Despite the tranquil image of Austen that lingers in the popular imagination, her life coincided with a period of intense, immense change. The American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, the uprising in Ireland… All through Austen’s early life, the old certainties were being subjected to challenge, new ideas were springing up – about democracy, freedom, slavery, poetry, the position of women.
Helena Kelly is the author of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical (2016)."

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Reading with Delight: Jane Austen or Hannah More?

Wednesday 17th September - 19:00

Austen’s friends were ‘reading with delight Mrs. H. More’s recent publication’. Evangelical author Hannah More, far more popular than Jane Austen, helped reform her society’s moral values and promoted education for women and the poor and abolition of slavery. Why is Hannah More forgotten today, while Austen still delights readers around the world?

Brenda S. Cox will compare and contrast these authors, concluding with a book signing for Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. Regency costume very welcome but not mandatory.

Venue: Bath Abbey, Abbey Churchyard, BA1 1LY

Tickets £13

Jane Austen: Fact or Fiction with Gill Hornby

Thursday 18th September - 11:00

Gill Hornby, author of three novels based on Jane Austen themes and a biography for young readers will be in conversation with Jane Tapley, Special Events Organiser at the Theatre Royal Bath, as part of the Jane Austen Festival celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.
She will talk about her love of Austen and what inspired her to write her books. All of them - Godmersham Park, Miss Austen and The Elopement have become best sellers and highly praised by the literary world. Miss Austen has recently been made into a series by the BBC, broadcast in February 2025.

This is a wonderfully original, emotionally complex novel that delves into why Cassandra burned a treasure trove of letters written by her sister Jane - an act of destruction that has troubled academics for centuries. Gill came to novel writing later in life when her four children had matured and has established herself as a successful writer alongside her brother Nick Hornby and her husband Robert Harris.

Venue: Theatre Royal, Saw Cl, Bath BA1 1ET

Tickets £13

Murder Most Austen

Thursday 18th September - 12:30

The past decade has seen a significant rise in Jane Austen detective fiction retellings. But what is it about Austen’s work that lends itself to the detective genre? What makes the Austen heroine qualified to solve a murder?
Join crime writer and crime fiction scholar Dr Lucy Andrew for a talk exploring the influence of Austen’s work on the development of detective fiction and the motives behind the current Austen crime wave.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Dormouse to Donkey Carts - The Carriages of Jane Austen's Era

Thursday 18th September - 14:00

Amy Bracey has been driving horse-drawn carriages since she was knee high to a grasshopper and her love for them became a career when working for the National Trust, cataloguing their carriage collection. She is Project Curator for The Carriage Foundation, an educational charity, and advises museums and individuals across the globe on the care, conservation, history and research of horse-drawn carriages.
This illustrated presentation will explore the modes of transport mentioned in Austen's novels and what they represented in the subtle language of her writings.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Dressing Obstinate Headstrong Girls; A look into the Costume Design within Jane Austen's film adaptations.

Friday 19th September - 10:00

In "Dressing Obstinate Headstrong Girls" Costume Designer and Fashion Historian Jolene Marie Richardson will be examining how costume designers used Jane Austen's characters and the time period at large to create the look of Jane's most notable characters.
Looking at "What does the regency clothing tell us about history?" and "how do the costume designers take history but imbue their own voice as designers?" This lecture will look at the role of costume designer and how it works with actors, screenwriters, and directors to create the visual signifiers of each of these characters. We will also be looking at how the time in which these films were made reflect both that time and the historical time of the story. Come with Jolene as we go behind the seams into Jane Austen's world of her most famous film adaptations.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Dancing with the Starts (Georgian Style)

Friday 19th September - 11:30

Jane Austen. The Duchess of Devonshire. The Prince Regent. What do these lives have in common? They were ‘fond of dancing and excelled in it’. From learning from famous dancing masters, to performing at the assembly rooms and in the homes of the fashionable Bon Ton in London, join Dr Hillary Burlock as she explores the triumphs and trials of Georgian celebrities in the ballroom.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, BA1 2HN

Tickets £14

Regency Fashion in the Fashion Museum Bath Collection

Friday 19th September - 14:00

Join Curator Elisabeth Murray to discover more about fashion during the regency period, through the lens of the Fashion Museum Bath collection.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Seeing and Being Seen at Bath - the nature of the Fashionable Day

Friday 19th September - 16:00

Come on a journey through a typical day and discover what it was like for visitors to Bath during the 'Season'; where would they be seen, how would they deport themselves, what were the 'must do' activities?
Back by popular demand is John White from Select Society with this new presentation.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

A Guide to Regency Dress - with Hilary Davidson

Saturday 20th September - 10:00

Join Hilary Davidson, associate professor and chair of MA Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York as she presents her new book: A Guide to Regency Dress. Covering male and female Regency fashion, hairstyles, jewellery and cosmetics, and revealing never-before-published facts and images, from the author’s fifteen years of research of original sources. This talk will form a practical introduction to all things Regency dress.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN

Tickets £13

Jane Austen’s Contradictory Characters - with John Mullan

Saturday 20th September - 11:30

Austen’s characters come to life partly because of their delicious - often absurd - inconsistencies. This talk will look at some of the ways that they entertainingly contradict themselves. It will reveal how the novels’ heroines, as well as their comic characters, come, like Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, ’to counteract their favourite maxims’.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN

Tickets £16

Gossip in Jane Austen - with John Mullan

Saturday 20th September - 14:00

In Jane Austen’s novels, gossip swirls around the characters. We will see how gossip is the life-blood of the small communities in which her heroines live, even if they sometimes do not perceive it. Sometimes, in fact, it shapes the very plots of the novels. Unlike Jane Austen’s Emma, we must learn to listen to the gossip.

Venue: Elwin Room, BRLSI, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN

Tickets £16

Austen's Arcadia

Friday 12th & Friday 19th September - 14:00

Jane Tapley follows the career of one of the earliest and greatest female writers of the 18th century, if not of all time. Hear about her quiet private life as an unmarried vicar's daughter and her personal struggle for independence, and how her novels gathered momentum and appreciation after her death. Talk followed by a Q&A.

Meet: In foyer of Theatre Royal, Saw Close, BA1 1ET

Tickets £13

Drawback the Curtain

Friday 12th & Friday 19th September - 15:30

Join Jane Tapley, Special Events Organiser at the Theatre Royal, for an illustrated talk on the theatre in Georgian times and its influence on Jane Austen's novels. The talk will take place in Bath's Georgian theatre built in 1805, the year Austen left Bath for the delights of Clifton.

Meet: In foyer of Theatre Royal, Saw Close, BA1 1ET

Tickets £13

A Very Private Public Breakfast

Saturday 13th September - 9:00

Sunday 14th, Wednesday 17th, Saturday 20th & Sunday 21st - 10:00

Sample the delights of an 18th Century public breakfast just as Jane Austen did in Bath. Bread rolls, toasted fruit bread, cake, tea (Jane Austen blend) or coffee - all in the private dining room of a typical Regency Bath house. Breakfast is accompanied by a talk from Jane Tapley.

Venue: Kinwarton, 3 Upper Camden Place, (part of) Camden Rd, BA1 5HX (20 mins walk)

Tickets £18

Rummaging through the Reticule

Saturday 13th, Sunday 14th & Saturday 20th  September - 16:00

What did Jane and her characters keep in their reticules? All will be revealed when the contents of this C18th handbag are spilt in the privacy of a Regency drawing room. Jane Tapley's talk is followed by refreshments, a traditional cream tea - scones, jam and cream and, of course, tea.

Venue: Kinwarton, 3 Upper Camden Place, (part of) Camden Rd, BA1 5HX (20 mins walk)

Tickets £18