We can't promise Mr. Darcy (or even Colin Firth) will be at the 16th annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath this summer. But we can promise bonnets, country dances, dramatic Pride and Prejudice readings, calligraphy workshops, and tours of Bath, where Austen wrote Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Marking the 200th anniversary of the author's death, the festival will also celebrate the 200th birthday of Northanger Abbey, which was published just after Austen's death at age 41.
You'll need to pace yourself. The 10-day festival in September will feature more than 80 events across Bath, where Austen lived for six years in the early 1800s. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, the city is known for its Palladian architecture and Roman baths. Many of Austen's characters, like Anne Elliot, walked the streets of Bath in Austen's novels, and many of those sites can be visited today.
Tickets for the September festival go on sale July 1 and you can reserve your spot for a meet & greet with the director of the 1995 film adaptation Pride and Prejudice, a masked ball (and dance classes to prepare you for the quadrille), and a Northanger Abbey tour of Catherine Morland's Bath.
If you can't make it to the festival in the late summer, there are still plenty of ways to channel your inner Austen. Head to Jane Austen's House Museum (the author's former home) in Chawton, about two hours west of London, for programming throughout the year. Or stay at Goodnestone Park, an eighteenth-century Palladian estate in Kent, where Austen was a frequent guest after her brother married into the family.
No matter what you do, just remember, don't follow the rules, embrace your inner indignant Georgian-era woman, and be wary of any British soldiers with bad intentions. It's what Austen and her characters would do, after all.