I spent last weekend out West and after seriously pulling some muscles in the Cheddar Gorge, ended up in Bath. For any of you that don't know, Bath was established as a spa (with the latin name Aquae Sulis) by the Romans, just twenty years after they arrived in Britain. It is now a beautiful city, built largely in golden Bath stone during the Georgian era and, despite having somehow managing to lose the massive source of natural hot water, is now a popular tourist destination with its famous Roman baths at its centre.
What does Bath have to do with books, though? I was starting to ask myself the same question as, for some reason, I was thinking Bath would be full of quirky little second hand bookshops and yet on arrival I could barely count two or three. Saying that, Bath does have something up its sleeve, though, as it was once the home of literary giant, Jane Austen. When I say literary giant, that makes it look like Jane herself were enormous. I wish this was the case, that the bigger the literary name, the bigger the author. Unfortunately not. Anyway, she lived in a number of different houses in the city and there is now a museum at Gay Street, just a few doors down from number 25, where Jane Austen lived herself.
It's not surprising, then, that Bath appeared in Austen's novels. In Persuasion, "lodgings in Gay Street" meet Sir Walter Elliot's "satisfaction" when the Admiral and Mrs Croft reveal they will be staying there. The website for the Jane Austen Centre also provides this quote from Northanger Abbey:
They arrived in Bath. Catherine was all eager delight; her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already. They were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pultney Street.
The Jane Austen Centre
40 Gay Street
Queen Square
Bath
BA1 2NT
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