Bath is also the filming location for parts of Bridgerton, Netflix’s wildly popular modern take on period drama based loosely on the Regency period, the decade when the future King George IV stood in as prince regent because his father was deemed unfit to rule due to mental illness.
Thanks to the show, Austen and Regency style – think romantic flowing gowns, elegant ballrooms and high society soirees – have become trendy for a new generation.
“I think Jane Austen is on the rise,” Potts said. “She’s definitely become more popular since Bridgerton.”
STEPPING BACK IN TIME TOGETHER
In a church hall in Winchester, a few streets away from where Austen was buried, the Hampshire Regency Dancers gather weekly to practice for the many performances they’re staging this year in honour of the author.
The group selects dances that appear in screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, and members go to painstaking detail to ensure their costumes, down to the buttons and stitching, are authentic-looking.
“We go to a lot of trouble to get things as close to the original as possible,” said Chris Oswald, a retired lawyer who now chairs the group. “For me, it’s about getting a better understanding of what life was like then, and in the process of doing that, getting a better understanding of Jane Austen herself.”
Oswald is passionate about his group’s showcases in Hampshire, or what he jokingly calls “Jane Austen land.”
“People get quite touched because they are walking where Jane Austen actually walked. They dance in a room that Jane Austen danced in,” he said. “For people who are very into Jane Austen, that’s extremely special.”
Many “Janeites” say they get huge enjoyment in making Austen’s words and imageries come to life in a community of like-minded people.
Lisa Timbs, a pianist who researches the music in Austen’s life and performs it on an antique pianoforte, puts it succinctly: She and her Regency friends are “stepping back in time together.”
“I think it’s an escape for a lot of people,” Timbs added. “Perhaps it’s to escape the speed, noise and abrasiveness of the era in which we find ourselves, and a longing to return to the elegance and indulgent pleasures of what was really a very fleeting period in history.”
