11 September 2025 – 11 January 2026
In the 250th anniversary year of Jane Austen’s birth, with Austen-themed events taking place all over the city of Bath where she lived from 1801 to 1806, the Holburne is delighted to present Illustrating Austen, a chance for audiences to see the artwork behind their favourite Austen novels.
Centring around Austen’s stories and the characters she created, Illustrating Austen demonstrates how our favourite characters came to life on the page, how different artists depicted them in a range of styles, and how they have evolved through the years, reflecting changing times and new audiences.
Austen resided just across the road from the Holburne Museum at 4 Sydney Place (from 1801-1804), and Bath had a profound effect on her work, particularly in her social commentary on the city in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. It was not until after her death in 1817 that interest in her work truly began to grow, and not until 1894 that the first complete illustrated edition of a Jane Austen novel was published, the famous ‘Peacock Edition’ of Pride and Prejudice by Hugh Thomson. From this point onward, Austen’s characters came to live visually on the page, and with each new illustrated edition of Austen’s work, her characters were interpreted differently, reflecting the styles of the artists who brought them to life and the time period in which the edition was produced.
This concise exhibition features illustrations, illustrated editions, original sketchbooks, printing blocks, and complete works, now considered works of art in their own right. It brings together, for the first time, some of the earliest illustrations of familiar characters with their modern iterations, taking us on a journey from the nineteenth century through to the current work of Coralie Bickford-Smith for Penguin cloth-bound classics.
A drawing of Marianne Dashwood lamenting the breakdown of her relationship with John Willoughby by William Cubitt Cooke, from 1892, will be on display alongside a wood engraving by Joan Hassell, depicting a Pride and Prejudice frontispiece featuring Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, from 1957. Pen and ink drawings by Henry Matthew Brock, Charles Edmund Brock and Hugh Thomson, among many others, bring beloved characters such as Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram from Mansfield Park, and Louisa Musgrove and Captain Frederick Wentworth from Persuasion to life.
Commenting on the exhibition Hannah N. Mills, curator, said: “Jane Austen’s characters and stories are beloved by many and in our modern age, it is the film and TV adaptations that influence our impressions of the characters. For Austen’s fans in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the illustrations on the page that brought the characters to life visually. We hope that this exhibition will allow you to explore the visual evolution of your favourite characters and bring them to life in your imaginations.”
Alone (Marianne Dashwood), William Cubitt Cooke, Wash Drawing, 1892 © The Holburne Museum