The city of Bath extensively promotes its connections to Jane Austen through tours, events, and themed souvenirs. In the 250th anniversary year of her birth, an exhibition titled The Most Tiresome Place in the World: Jane Austen & Bath is being launched to highlight Austen's displeasure during her five years in the city. Despite her dissatisfaction, she used Bath as a backdrop in her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Curator Izzy Wall emphasizes the contrast between Bath's current beauty and its unpleasant reality during Austen's time.
"Bath is known for Jane Austen and I think just about every organisation in Bath, including us, use it. We benefit from the association. But she didn't like living in the city."
"Austen was told the family were moving from Hampshire to Bath, she is said to have fainted. How much that is exaggerated, we'll never know, but it's a good story."
"We look at Bath today as a beautiful, historic town but in Austen's time it was still a building site in places. Every house had a smoking chimney and it was lacking in proper sewage."
"Although she disliked Bath, Jane Austen used the city extensively as backdrops in two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey."
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