Celebrating 250 years of Jane Austen

Jane and the Assembly Rooms

Bath Assembly Rooms was one of Jane Austen’s favourite places in the city. Having loved attending grand balls there during her early visits to Bath, when she moved to the city permanently in 1801 the date of the next ball was one of the first things on her mind. Though she had arrived in Bath at the end of the social season (“there is to be only one more ball!” she wrote in horror to her sister upon arrival), fortunately, she was able to make up for lost time. Austen would live in Bath for the next five years and attended balls at Bath Assembly Rooms both regularly and enthusiastically.

Dancing was not just a pastime for Austen—it was a vital social ritual and one that features prominently in her novels. Bath Assembly Rooms in particular, celebrated throughout the country and designed for their thriving programme of balls, concerts, and card evenings, appear in both of Austen’s Bath novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion). Though busy and always full of people, the Assembly Rooms could always be relied on to facilitate snatched, private moments of surprising intimacy – in both fiction and in real life.

Though a keen attender of balls and other social events, Austen would also have known the inner workings of Bath Assembly Rooms thanks to her family connections. Her uncle, James Leigh Perrot, was on the management committee of the Rooms, giving her behind-the-scenes insights into the complex politics that governed Bath's social scene. As her characters living in Bath discover, these unwritten codes and etiquette could be hard to negotiate – though all of her heroines ultimately gain their happy ending.

Bath Assembly Rooms were not just part of Austen’s daily life—they were woven into the emotional and narrative structure of her fiction. In her hands, the building became far more than just an elegant venue: it was a space of self-discovery, of navigating social hierarchies, and of capturing the exhilaration, hope, and anxiety of being young and on display in Georgian society.

History podcast - Jane Austen and the Georgian Dating Scene

Listen to the latest 'Back When' podcast, all about Jane Austen and the dating scene in Georgian times. This episode is set in Bath with Bath Assemby Rooms' curator, Dr Tim Manningmore.

Georgian Britain is certainly an era associated with courtship and marriage, but what were the rules you had to date by? Tim reflects on what we know, through the life and works of Jane Austen.