This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the BBC is duty-bound to produce some high-quality telly to celebrate the fact.
Sure enough, BBC One has a new four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel Miss Austen landing this month to kick off a year of Austen love. Naturally, you can trust the Beeb to do a gilded job of summoning the look and feel of Regency England to the screen – and packing the series with stitch-perfect costumes and period-appropriate locations.
But how did Miss Austen find its fresh evocation of Jane and her sister Cassandra’s corner of middle-class, 19th century England? Read on to find out.
What is Miss Austen about?
Intriguingly, the series, directed by Maudie’s Aisling Walsh, is told not from the perspective of Jane Austen but her sister Cassandra. She’s a controversial figure in English literary history for having burnt Jane’s private letters after her death. The truth, though, as this elegant and human period drama will reveal, is more complex...
Split over two timelines, it opens with the middle-aged Cassandra Austen (Keeley Hawes) in 1830, 13 years after the death of her sister Jane, as she heads to her young in-law Isabella Fowles’ (Rose Leslie) home to surreptitiously burn her sister’s personal letters.
The motivations behind this infamous act of literary arson are shown in flashbacks to 1795 that explore the younger Cassandra (Synnøve Karlsen) and her sister Jane’s (Patsy Ferran) relationship with each other – as well as the odd young gentleman.
‘Cassandra is ostensibly there to help her friend,’ runs the official synopsis, ‘but her real motive is to find a stash of private letters which, in the wrong hands, could destroy Jane’s reputation’.
Where was Miss Austen filmed?
The series was filmed in the Home Counties from November 2023 – although not Bath, arguably the town most closely associated with Jane Austen.
Thanks to the expert production design of John Hand, this recreation of Austenland was crafted entirely on location. Here’s where it was shot.
Adwell House, Berkshire
The meat of the drama takes place at Kintbury Vicarage near Thame, the home of the Fowles family – close friends of the Austens. It’s here that Cassandra heads to support her friend Isabella on the death of her father, and locate (and destroy) her sister’s letters.
Adwell House in nearby Berkshire stood in for the vicarage during the filming of Miss Austen. The Kintbury house Cassandra Austen once visited no longer exists: it was pulled down and rebuilt in 1860, according to Miss Austen novelist Gill Hornby.
Shottesbrooke House, Berkshire
Steventon Vicarage, the rural Hampshire home where Jane Austen was born and lived for 25 years, and where she began work on novels like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, was demolished soon after the family moved to Bath in 1801. (The rectory that replaced it went on sale for £8.5 million in 2023.)
Instead, Miss Austen used the privately-owned Tudor mansion of Shottesbrooke House near Windsor.
Chawton, Hampshire
Scenes from Miss Austen were also filmed in Austen’s home in Chawton. The novelist lived in the village during one of the most fruitful periods of her life. Emma, Persuasion and Sanditon were all written in the Hampshire hamlet, where she lived with Cassandra and their mother.
‘It’s true that Jane Austen didn’t, that we know of, work hugely on any of her novels whilst they were moving around in lodgings,’ Stella adds. ‘It was only when she moved to Chawton… that she had a room of her own to write in and was incredibly productive.’
You can find the Jane Austen museum in the house these days – entry is £15 for adults.
Rye and Camber Sands
Miss Austen’s flashback sequences also take us to the seaside. Sidmouth in the summer of 1801, to be precise. Jane and Cassandra visited the Devon town at the invitation of a dashing but newly-wed vicar, Richard Buller, and the potential for scandal brewed.
A version of the episode, about which little is known, features in Miss Austen with East Sussex standing in for Devon. ‘We had a week in Rye which was absolutely stunning,’ says Synnøve Karlsen. ‘We filmed on the sand dunes around Camber Sands and it was absolutely freezing! It was around minus 5 degrees Celsius and we were trying to look as comfortable as we could sitting on the beach having a summer picnic.’
Langleybury House, Hertfordshire
This 18th century manor house and production hub in leafy Kings Langley has been a secret weapon in numerous shows and films in recent years. It’s been a staple in period pieces from The Crown to Mr Selfridge (and Adele's ‘Rolling in the Deep’ music video). In Miss Austen, it doubles for Winchester, Southampton, and Jane Austen’s old dancing haunt, Basingstoke Assembly Rooms.
Where can I watch Miss Austen?
The first episode of the four-part series begins on BBC One at 9.05pm on Sunday Feb 2, with further instalments airing on consecutive Sundays. You can watch the whole series on iPlayer from Sunday.
If you’re in the US, it airs as part of PBS’s Masterpiece series from Sunday, May 4.
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