FINDING AUSTEN IN BATH

Spend a day walking around the spa town of Bath in the UK for its golden buildings, hot water baths, and literary monuments of Jane Austen’s worlds.

- BARSALI BHATTACHARYYA

I WAS INTRODUCED TO Jane Austen at the age of 13, when I picked up a dog-eared copy of Pride & Prejudice from my school library. With time, our acquaintance became a special one. By the time I went to get a bachelor’s degree in English literature, I had read all seven of her works and pinned Bath, where the Jane Austen Centre (janeausten.co.uk) is located, to the top of my bucket list.

More than a decade later, I am on a train to Bath, in Somerset, South West England. Austen is reported to have first visited the town, named after its hot water baths, in 1797, and she came back to live here between 1801 and 1806 with members of her family. She was inspired by the town and chose it as the backdrop for two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

After three hours on the train, I reach my destination, armed with a physical map and an audio guide downloaded from Bath’s tourism website (visitbath.co.uk). The first thing I notice is that most of the buildings are golden in colour, starting from the Tudor-style station to Bath Abbey, the starting point of my self-guided walking tour. Even on a grey rainy morning, the city is shining. The buildings are made of locally quarried golden limestone, a feature attributable to John Wood, a 19th-century architect who owned these limestone mines.