A Jane Austen Christmas · Chawton Cottage Cheer (AW6)

“This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend’s house for a week. Nothing could be pleasanter…” So says Mr Elton in Emma, the novel by Jane Austen whose home was this red-brick house, Chawton Cottage, in Hampshire. Here she lived with her mother, sister Cassandra and best friend, Martha Lloyd, and here she wrote (among other novels) Emma.