Today is the 250th birthday of the celebrated British author Jane Austen, an author that Virginia Woolf held in great esteem, as evidenced by the fact that references to Austen are all over Woolf’s writing.

This is the tiny table where Jane Austen did her writing. Only the tabletop is original. It is housed at Chawton House in Hampshire, the one-time home of Jane’s brother Andrew.

Where Woolf mentions Austen

• diaries — both early and late
• letters
• essays, including a chapter on Austen in The Common Reader: First Series (1925)
• short story “A Society” (1915)
• Roger Fry: A Biography (1940)
• A Room of One’s Own (1929)
• Three Guineas (1938)
• The Voyage Out (1915)
• Jacob’s Room (1922)
• To the Lighthouse (1927).
• the “Reminiscences” chapter of her autobiographical Moments of Being (1976)

A few quotes from Woolf about Austen

Interestingly enough, today I spotted these two timeless Austen classics on the book table at the bargain store Five Below in my city.

The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and sense which she has in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows up those deviations from kindness, truth, and sincerity which are among the most delightful things in English literature. – The Common Reader: First Series, pg. 141.

The real novelist can somehow convey both sorts of being. I think Jane Austen can – Moments of Being, pg. 70.

More on Austen

For more on Woolf and Austen read “Jane Austen Turns 250: Why the Beloved Author Still Endures Today” from the Washington State University Libraries, which has four first-edition Austen novels in its collection.

See more photos from Jane Austen’s House Museum, which uses 41 objects throughout the house she lived in from 1809-1817 to tell her story, as well as Charlton House, where her brother Edward lived. She visited there regularly.

Jane Austen’s House and Museum, which was her home from 1809-1817.

The rather small bed Jane Austen shared with her sister Charlotte.