The 16th December marks the birthday of Jane Austen and we took a trip to her cottage in Chawton which was serving mince pies and drinks in celebration.  An extra delight was that we had our first snow and it fell thick and fast, covering the garden and the cottages in the village.  It was a scene straight from a Christmas card. 

We also had the pleasure of chatting to the Jane Austen museum’s writer in residence, Rebecca Smith.  Rebecca is the great, great, great, great, great niece of Jane and it’s lovely to think of a direct descendent writing in the cottage today.  Read her lovely blog here.

Chawton House looked especially beautiful and the churchyard at St Nicholas – where Jane’s mother and sister are buried – was silent and snowy.

Then it was on to Winchester where the final chapter of my novel is set.  The cathedral was wonderfully quiet and I sat by Jane Austen’s grave in the north aisle, making some notes for my book. 

Happy Birthday, Jane!  You’re one of the best Christmas presents ever given to the world!

I really will have to think about moving to Chawton one of these days as I’m there so often.  My latest trip was to hear a lecture about Jane Austen’s manuscripts and it was fascinating stuff.  Did you know that our beloved author didn’t know how to use apostrophes properly?  She would send her hand-written manuscripts to the publisher with all sorts of crossings out and errors and they turned everything into the perfect prose that we know and love today.  But I think the highlight of the talk for me was actually being within touching distance of six first-edition copies of her books!

Monday brought a trip to the Isle of Wight to deliver more of hubby’s paintings to Island Fine Arts.  We were anxious about the crossing as there was some heavy rain around but it was fairly smooth, thank goodness, and the sun even came out for us in the afternoon and we drove up to Culver Down where Roy painted and Molly and I went walking. 

Back at home now and my first website competition has come to a close.  Katie Fforde chose the winner out of over three hundred entries and the signed copy of Molly’s Millions and the goody bag are winging their way to Chaitali in Illinois, USA. 

If you’d like to know more about Katie Fforde, have a look at the Writer Top Tens  page where you can also read all about Carole Matthews too!  More top tens coming soon …

On a day stolen from summer, we visited the pretty Hampshire village of Chawton – home of Jane Austen. I’d visited her cottage before but, now that I’m writing my book about Jane Austen addicts, I wanted to see it again. It’s such a lovely place and I adored seeing the pretty topaz crosses worn by Jane and her sister, Cassandra. And the gift shop is an Austen addicts’ dream with books galore and the brooding image of Darcy everywhere!

I’d also booked for a tour of Chawton House Library - the place referred to as the ‘Great House’ in the letters of Jane Austen, and owned by her brother, Edward.  There are some fabulous portraits and wooden pannelling, and the library is a delight featuring many rare books by women writers published between 1600 to 1830. 

Whilst walking in the grounds, I managed to take a tumble – Marianne Dashwood style – and badly twisted my ankle.  But, despite the fact that I was in Austen-land, there were no handsome men on horseback to rescue me and I had to do my best to hobble my way back to where my husband was painting .

If you’d like to see his lovely paintings of Chawton, visit his blog here: