VISITING BATH & LYME REGIS

Bath - The Crescent

Bath - One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it

On my tour of England from north to south last year (HERE) I couldn’t complete my Jane Austen pilgrimage, since my friends and I were following more than one trail (Richard III, movie locations, literature, abbeys and cathedrals) and each of us had put her own special goals on our common schedule. This is why we decided we would complete my Austen tour this year  visiting the South – West region of the Island and  starting from Somerset (we landed in Bristol),  more precisely  from Bath.

Me at the Roman Baths

The most common opinion on the years Jane Austen spent in Bath wants them unhappy and unproductive.

Jane arrived in Bath with Cassandra and her parents in 1800, after her father had unexpectedly announced his desire to retire from the ministry. Young Jane must have been really depressed if not shocked, though Bath was not and is not an unpleasant place .

Those (1800- 1809) are the years of The Watsons, which she left unfinished, of Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal (her only marriage proposal for what we know), which she rejected, but those are tragically and especially the years when her father died and left Jane, her mother and her sister doomed to live on the financial contributions of the Austen men.