Jane Austen's House in Chawton has launched its 250th anniversary programme.

The house, where Austen lived, wrote and published her novels during the last eight years of her life, opened a new permanent exhibition on Wednesday, October 9.

The exhibition, titled Jane Austen and the Art of Writing, is free with house admission.

It celebrates Austen as a "ground-breaking and ambitious writer," linking her creative process with the domestic space from which it came.

The exhibition showcases objects believed to have inspired Austen's writings, including topaz crosses gifted to her and her sister by their sailor brother Charles in 1804.

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A full collection of first editions of Austen's novels is also on display, housed in a 12-sided display case echoing Austen's famous 12-sided writing table.

Sophie Reynolds, head of collections, interpretation, and events at Jane Austen’s House, said: "This exhibition is a deep dive into Jane Austen’s creative process.

"We hope that it will unlock a new way for our visitors to understand Jane Austen as a dedicated, driven, and professional writer, and to explore how her life and living arrangements affected her writing in the very house in which she lived and wrote."

The exhibition also explores Austen's letters and how letter-writing influenced her novels.

It features large-scale facsimiles of letters from the museum collection and a short film about the manuscript of The Watsons, one of Austen's few surviving manuscripts.

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Lizzie Dunford, Jane Austen’s House director, said: "Jane Austen and the Art of Writing is a landmark new exhibition for not just the museum, but for lovers of Austen’s work around the world.

"Years in the planning, it brings together the extraordinary books and objects that make the collection at Jane Austen’s House so unique, and so special, and will allow visitors to be quite literally surrounded by the books and objects that influenced Austen, and the groundbreaking, era-defining novels that were written from her final home.

"It is a treasury; of words, of ideas, and of the eternal brilliance of Austen’s imagination."

The house will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth throughout 2025 with additional exhibitions, events, and themed festivals.

A new book, A Jane Austen Year: Celebrating 250 Years of Jane Austen, will be published in March 2025.

For more information, visit janeaustens.house/visit/jane-austen-250.